Ok, it might just take a couple of days to show up. Thanks
Printable View
The site has been down for 2 days now. Not a good look.
Those with large balances there must be building up a lot of idle cash.
Yesterday They said "We have already re-opened the investor dashboard for some investors, and expect to progressively open this to all investors over the next 24-72 hours."
Does anyone on here actually have access to their dashboard back yet?
I realised there was something wrong yesterday before it went down as my outstanding amounts was 0 ;)
Still no access.
I have not had an accurate dashboard now for a month. A phone call from the call centre promised return to normal about 3 weeks ago!! Two days ago I got a call from Harmoney office saying that some investors are affected, some will be fixed shortly and all will be well and working by the 21st April. Bit of a fiasco really. With well over a 100 loans it would be quite a job to tote up balances and returns etc. So I will just hope it all gells eventually. I asked about the 8 loans that I have had repaid re the 1.25% fee and it seems that the borrowers have a 5 day cooling off period and if your loan is repaid in that time then no fees. Otherwise the investor is charged the fee. They also calculate that the average term of a loan will be around 28 months as some will be repaid well before maturity. Still a good con
cept and I will be waiting to see if the new dashboard works when it is up and running before further investment.
My dashboard is up and working as of this morning. As to it's accuracy I can't comment.
I asked about the 8 loans that I have had repaid re the 1.25% fee and it seems that the borrowers have a 5 day cooling off period and if your loan is repaid in that time then no fees. Otherwise the investor is charged the fee. .[/QUOTE]
Interesting they say that because I was charged the 1.25% when the loan was repaid straight away.
How accurate do you reckon the grades are? Are the A grades really that much safer than the E?
Hard to say at this stage. Give it a few more months but so far my "arrears" have been across the board between the grades and so far all been paid eventually. Albeit without penalty fees!! And buy the way, my dashboard has just emerged from wherever and seems to be ok.
I think you need to grade them yourself. Some of the loans I don't invest in as they seem to have unacceptable info. e.g. Why would a 50-59 yr old rent/board when they show an income of $10,000+ a month? And if they really earned that much why would they borrow money at these rates? You would think their bank would be happy to lend to them. So something is wrong. I doubt their income so give them an "F" irrespective of what Harmoney gives them.
Out of 15 loans in the C-E buckets 9 of them are for exactly $10,600. They appear to be for different purposes, but is there a reason they're all this value?
Just cleaned up all the blood.
I am sure all the banks will be pleased you had a go at me and not them..
The thing is a lot of the loans with high income are paying a lot more than 17.95% interest with Harmoney. Often C3 or lower rates. I think the bank would be a better alternative.
You can either accept Harmoney's grading or do your own with what information you have to work with, their grading, quoted income, housing/living situation,employment situation and the reason for borrowing (if they so wish to give it). At times i wonder if the information given is genuine but that is all we have. You have to form a picture of the person you are lending to. After all the intention is to get your loan repaid.
Each to his/her own.
Harmoney are running ads encouraging borrowing for holidays as a way of avoiding jealousy: "Get your own holiday pics. Dont be jealous of your friends' holiday, take your own with a peer-2-peer loan." Responsible advertising?
I think they can write anything they want in the comments. The worry is that the best sounding ones are likely to be the ones that are made up, so you could end up having loans with a lot of shifty people. Saying you are helping your son through medical school sounds better than debt consolidation
I have had a couple of loans written off - a B3 and a F3. neither ever received a payment.
That's a bit of a worry as in my view one could take the view this is a sign that some degree of fraud is slipping through Harmoney's front end loan application process. Were they loans for overseas holidays by any chance...people with no intention of returning ?
I haven't had any loans written off (yet) but expecting a few will, hopefully less than the forecast rate...
I have noticed Harmoney have let some suspicious loans slip through with false information. As an example, I spotted was a borrower who was making 46k per month... Harmoney shortly noticed these irregularities and removed them from the marketplace. There is some value in performing your own 'filtering' when picking loans to fund.
This is one that was 'pending approval' but somehow ended up on the marketplace. Note the massive reported monthly income.
Attachment 7303
Maybe he put his annual income down by mistake ? A lot of people are no good at dotting the I's and crossing the T's filling out forms either paper based or online.
You might be right Roger. I hope Harmoney are vigilant and ensure their systems will pick up on errors and irregularities before they end up on the marketplace.
I have not had any loans written off yet but out of 130 odd loans there have been 10 re-paid with sometimes a negative result for me. It is very difficult for me to reconcile or analise any info as yet cause my dashboard is still not running as it should. Anyone else with this problem? They have emailed me once again saying that they are working hard on the problem. Still keen to invest more when and if this problem is resolved--maybe........
Dashboard up and accurate for 2 days. Now nothing has happened for 3 days. Disappointing.
No defaults yet for me. 3 repaid in full. One immediately the other 2 after about 3-4 months. Both worked just slightly better than bank interest.
How accurate do you think their 31/3/15 tax info will be?
I had an application ready to go a while back but reading between the lines on this thread I'm glad I never sent it in. Seems to much trouble all round for the potential benefit.
Well all correct again now.
My thoughts exactly. I think p2p lending is very exciting, but I don't think Harmoney have really nailed it. Would be good to see some other players entering the market, if nothing else that should force them to cut their fees, which currently seem totally incommensurate with the service they currently offer.
I have been advised that the dashboard problem has been resolved and mine seems to be ok now.
I have been advised that mine is correct also but it isn't and hasn't been for some time . There appears to be no way of following what is happening to your account. I have asked for information as to how they arrived at their figures but only get sent more or less the same information as is on the dashboard. They have spent 2 days trying to find my last deposit, which is a day longer than it took to find the previous deposit. Just about over these people, good idea but haven't got the programs in place to run it
Interesting Harvey those two loan are my only write offs also. I made contact with them about the b3 and was told it was an exceptional circumstance where the guy had lost his job. They reckon they wold have made the same assessment on the loan is B3. I guess that sort of thing will happen sometimes - I have over 300 loans and don't expect or want to be involved in each one.
Update for anyone interested, I put in $500 for a test and split it across a D1, E2, 2xE3, and and E4. To date I've had payments on three of them but the E2 and an E3 have already gone into arrears without a single payment.
Will be interesting to see how it goes, but at this point I'm not impressed with 2/5 going into arrears without a single payment.
I was talking to the Money3 (MNY.AX) CEO back in March. Money3 are the last resort for many Australians. He basically said that some people will simply not pay (for whatever reason). For Money3, they will not do business with them again. They make their money from return customers of whom they have a track record.
I wonder if the same applies to Hamoney? I.e. Harmoney need to weed out the bad borrowers in the first couple of years of operation. It won't be until then that Harmoney starts producing better returns for it's borrowees?
People considering this would be wise to do some serious research on default rates in other operations run around the world.
Google p2p lending and p2p lending default rates and have a really good read on what's available on the net. What I have read concerns me.
Identity fraud when you remove the person to person loan application process of normal consumer financial channels is higher...its easier to commit fraud with documents scanned and sent by e.mail.
Just because Harmoney says the default rate is projected at a certain percentage doesn't mean it will be...think about all the vast numbers of consumer finance companies that went under in the GFC, now factor in additional delinquencies from identity fraud that's easier in a loan application process over the internet and then join the dots. This could be anything but a harmonious experience for investors but very harmonious for fraudsters.
I rate this thing as a speculative experimental form of investment, only after about three years will we really know what the true default and fraud rate is. I think there's enough early anecdotal evidence to put a prudent investor on alert but please keep your experience stories coming as only by sharing do we learn how this thing is going and I take an interest because of HNZ's investment through this channel.
I have 10k invested over around 140 loans and so far no defaults. Most of my loans are around the C1 to D4 range with a few more across the range. Nearly all 36 months. The arrears are fairly steady at $20-$35 and have been since I started back in Oct. There was a couple of months there when I was concerned about their web site but for the last 3 weeks it now seems ok. I withdrew $500 net profit 2 weeks ago and that was paid out in 1 day. There have been 12 loans paid off ( 2 with a small net loss to me) and I have re-invested them. Overall, I am happy with the performance at this stage and will probably increase my holdings.
Roger,
I want to challenge your assumption that p2p would have a greater fraud rate. If you want a loan through any NZ banks, you would do it on-line. Are you suggesting that banks have more checks in place or perhaps fraudsters would rather target Harmoney than a major bank?
Here is a NZ view:
http://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/70...ution-needs-be
I guess lenders are taking part in a bit of an experiment at this stage. It will take a couple before we know default rates at Harmoney.
I've put in 10k over 400+ loans, mostly D and E. It's always about $10-40 in arrears, no defaults yet (but expect some to occur). Interest returned is trending towards where it should be.
From what I've read, with P2P lending you should be targeting highly diversified to ensure the forecasted percentages pan out, 400+ loans is a typically advised.
If you only hold a small number of loans, a couple of bad deals will significantly skew default rates for a loan portfolio.
Is anyone planning on deducting the service charge from the interest earned for your tax return. If so how are you going to work it out. The tax certificate is now available but the service charge is not included.
I invest via a company and will be claiming it as a cost of doing business. The tax certificate only shows interest and tax per tax regulations.
Did anyone have any write offs during the year and if so, how are you treating them. I didn't in 2015 but have in 2016 and will almost certainly be claiming a bad debt deduction - I invest via a company and have over 100 loans so consider it part of the companies business (note the company is an investment company so investments is its business). Note: this was discussed earlier in the thread between Roger and me (I think) so probably best go back and read if you want general info on it.
Noodles, Yes you can certainly apply for a loan through a bank online but usually they're in a better position to do an identity check on you, (existing customer) and if you're not you'll find they've toughened up on new customers. Usually they want to see two original forms of identity in person to open a bank account, one a photo I.D. like vehicle licence and one a utilities bill for address verification, can't see why it would be different for new lending customers, so original documents in person is the key here to open a new account.
In years gone by it was easier, now they want to see things like a copy of your inland revenue assessments to confirm income...are Harmoney that thorough and do they want to see original identity documents in person ? Do they have access to your bank records or do they just ask for evidence of income, identity and bank statements to be scanned and sent via e.mail, in which case its not impossible to alter documents before scanning them.
The Jury is out on default rates and what they claim will be the average is something I'm suggesting is little more than just an outright guess and of course they are commercially motivated to guess on the light side so its hardly an independent estimate is it ! Do they guarantee those default rates and is there any comeback against Harmoney if they're wildly inaccurate...No, I didn't think so, no warranty that their representation in this regard is in any way reasonable means you have to treat it with a grain of salt. I'm "guessing" in your mind and others that makes me a real sceptic :)
Mine are all A B and C not even a late payment yet, but it has only been two months
That's good but unfortunately fake drivers licences are a dime a dozen from any counterfeiter in China and many other countries. I'd like to know what other identification processes they used and how they verified your income, (assuming you applied for a loan rather than being an investor).
That's indeed a good sign but as you say its early days.Quote:
Mine are all A B and C not even a late payment yet, but it has only been two months
Yeh good point I was applying as an investor so unsure how the loan side works. Just had a look on the website and it looks like you have to provide recent banking records and employment details. I assume these details must be able to provide some level of robustness in terms of verification...
https://www.harmoney.com/how-it-works/borrower-faq
I invested a very small sum and have not had any defaults or late payments to date (been around 6 months)
Same here "I invested a very small sum and have not had any defaults or late payments to date (been around 6 months) "
all good so far.
I had a breif look over their site and have a question ...how do you get your money back into your hand ? i.e not just into your Harmoney account but how do you as the investor withdraw your money from Harmoney ? Do they impose any restrictions on when and how this may be done ?
Interesting study that might be useful when looking at loan applications on Harmoney.
"The words people use say a lot about their personalities, emotions, and thinking. And the ones they use when asking to borrow money, it turns out, also says a lot about whether they are likely to pay others back."
http://qz.com/420576/the-words-peopl...-pay-you-back/
A Study:Pretty good returns so far
http://www.interest.co.nz/personal-f...experiment-and
She really is doing it wrong. Mistakes:
- depositing all up front, not drip feeding in
- not going in every day to review the new loans
I dont remember the graph at the bottom of this page before: https://www.harmoney.com/investors/loan-performance
Basically more than half of the defaults are expected to occur in the first 10 months which agrees with this : http://www.lendacademy.com/the-diffe...ns-on-prosper/
Most of my investing was done 10 months ago, most towards the higher risk end (though one was a B3!) and I have had less than 2% default. If I double this and take if off the forecast return, I should be earning over 15% which is quite good.
Is anyone else seeing their amount in arrears increasing compared to normal? Will need to do some calcs to see if it is an increase or just because my loan balance is increasing (appears to be the former but haven't confirmed).
Have notice a lot more refinancing coming though in the loans (ie. paying off an existing Harmoney loan and adding a few more $ into a new loan). Good payment histories but doens't give a good impression if you are having budgeting issues that early on in a loan.
Still having issues with the login - they should have been able to sort it out by now.
The refinancing/rewriting is concerning as in investor as the principal is released back to me (less service fees); needing to reinvest again or risk a large balance of funds building up and earning no interest.
They have been operating for almost a 1 year now, Harmoney should start releasing some performance information so investors can see how they are tracking compared to their forecast defaults.
Out of 153 loans, I have had 21 repaid in full. Effective interest rates on these has been OK with the worst one being about 7.24%. I think any loan repaid in the first 6 months should have an adjustment to the 1.25% fee on the principal.
3 loans are in arrears for more than a month. Often the arrears are just short term.
Getting logged out all the time annoys me. The informed me a new update of the site is coming up so hope that improves things.
Yes my arrears have nearly doubled in the last month & I'm only reinvesting returned P&I at present.
The refinancing has to be due to a Harmoney initiative i.e.mailout etc?? There have been too many to be anything else, I've had 12% of loans paid off early.
I do keep a spreadsheet and yes it is a bit time consuming but I wanted to be able to reconcile everything as my faith in their site was not great.
However if you click on the loan it gives you the date issued and the date repaid along with the gross interest received. Take the gross and reduce it by the tax paid and the 1.25% of the gross interest and 1.25% of the original loan and you have the net result.Gross it back up. Simple to annualise it from the number of days invested.
Yes, it's been creeping up over the past few weeks and not reducing.
It may be unrelated, but they have a (Chrome) bug in the web site that isn't handling cookie time-outs correctly. If you don't logout but close the browser window the active cookie is left behind. Next time you visit the site from that PC (browser) the menu indicates you can view your Dashboard (suggesting you're still logged in), but clicking this flicks back to the login page. Clicking Logout before trying to Login works around this.
They have a number of basic web app bugs in the login page that are quite annoying and their support team don't seem to respond on these. They're a two minute fix and would really improve the user experience;
1. The email field should 'toLower' and trim blanks before trying to validate the input value. Auto-complete keyboards on mobile devices will often leave a trailing space (e.g. Swiftkey on Android) and this causes the email validation to fail.
2. The username/email field should probably gain focus automatically when the login page loads. This would reduce the number of clicks the user has to complete in order to log in.
3. Press 'enter' while the username/email field has focus should only trigger the login button if the password field has a value, otherwise it should put focus to the password field.
These are basic functional test failures that give me some raise for concern that if these aren't working correctly, what else, that's more complex, is not being tested and fixed...?
Sorry, slightly on a soap box, but really, these are basic web dev issues that are 'low risk' but make the login UX better. Which I guess is what they want?
They are meant to be building a second version of the site (which is now overdue) so I wonder if it is more a case of not wanting to spend time fixing something that will be fixed any day. Depends I guess on if they will be reusing existing code or if its a complete rebuild.
Arrears are slowly growing also. Another thing I am finding is that the 36 month loans are becoming fewer in the marketplace. 24 out of 120 loans paid off. I have stopped reinvesting in the meantime but keep reviewing the situation.
I seem to have fair few in arrears at the moment some by several months. but haven't received any Overdue Fees at all. Has anyone received any?
Also any one had anything Written Off? What is the criteria for this to happen?
I only dropped $500 in there to test the water and spread this across 5 loans, D1, E2, E3, E3, E4. An E2 and E3 went into Arrears without seeing a single payment, and the other E3 saw two payments before going into Arrears. No sign of anything being written off, or any communication as to what is happening to try and recoup the money.
Has anyone noticed these additions to the FAQ (they were not there when I joined)
WHAT IS A LOAN REWRITE?
In short, it means that the borrower has requested to increase the amount they have borrowed.
Harmoney offers this option to creditworthy borrowers who have demonstrated a reliable repayment record for a minimum of three months, allowing borrowers to extend their loan amount up to their maximum approved limit.
HOW DOES A REWRITE WORK?
When borrowers apply to top up their loans, the loan contract terms must be changed, therefore the original contract must be paid out and the new loan contract must be issued. For this reason, borrowers need to have the new loan total (original loan outstanding amount + top up amount + platform fee) fully funded by investors.
Once the new loan total is funded, the outstanding balance of the original loan is paid back to investors, and the borrower receives the top up amount. The original loan is then considered repaid and closed.
In the event that a rewrite does not reach full funding on the marketplace, the borrower’s original loan continues without change.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A LOAN I HAVE INVESTED IN IS REWRITTEN?
You will be repaid the outstanding principal and interest accrued and unpaid up to the date of the re-write, less the service fee. The repaid funds will be available in your account for withdrawal or reinvestment.
I had noticed the increasing number of rewrites showing up in the market place and also the increasing number of early repayments. I suspected this was what was happening but could not be sure.
It seems harmoney has structured this to maximize the service fees that they can charge and are effectively double dipping. Why (other then increasing service fees charged) is a top up to a loan done as a full repayment and a new loan and not as a top up (or additional loan)?
Many of the rewrites Im seeing on the markets have a repayment history of as little as 3 months. strike this a few times and your now paying a service fee of 5% per annum instead of the 0.25%-0.42% per annum a 3 to 5 year would have resulted in.
I don't invest in rewrites because those reasons humvee. I actually think any loan repaid early should not have the 1.25% deducted or that it should be a penalty fee paid by the borrower for option of early repayment. As a lender I don't have the option of demanding early repayment.
It would be good to get some communication on the state of loans in arrears.
Well one of my E3's in arrears has now come out of Arrears, however no sign of any Overdue income.
Judging on my experience and reading posts here it seems like Harmoney is skewed quite heavily towards Borrowers, and of course, Harmoney themselves, with Investors getting what they're given and liking it...
Not investing in rewrites wont help you infact rewrites might be less likely to get the loan size increased vs a 1st loan.
reading between the lines in some of the borrowers information/FAQ's it sounds like In many cases harmoney is pre approving the borrower for more money then they originally asked for - so they can increase their loan at a later date.
If this is happening this information should be shown in the information that is available to the lenders.
100% correct humvee. My mistake.
Regarding the rewrites, the repayment should not happen. They should just take out a extra loan to cover the extra borrowing.
I emailed them and the answer was "rewrites are an important part of our business".
They expect rewrites to be 25% of the average investor's portfolio.
My repayments are around 20% of loans at present. No way of telling if they are repaid due rewrites or just the borrower repaying as they don't need the loan any longer.
Lending Club (the business model which I believe Harmoney replicates) has a policy to lessen the impact of early repayments and rewrites/refinancing for lenders/investors in regards to the service fee.
Retrieved from https://www.lendingclub.com/public/r...nd-fees.action
Would like to see Harmoney adopt a similar policy.Quote:
When a borrower prepays their loan (pays off all or part of their loan earlier than the contractual due date) during the first 12 months after a Note is issued, we limit the size of the service fee charged to investors in Notes corresponding to that loan in order to protect their returns. For those first 12 months, an investor will never pay a monthly service fee greater than 1% of the contractual monthly payment amount due to such investor. For example, if the contractual monthly payment amount due to an investor is $300 and a prepayment of $4,000 is distributed to the investor's account, he or she would only be charged a service fee of $3 (1% of $300) that month.
May be you could suggest that to them.
I wonder if we will get some site improvements
"
We’ll be back soon!
Sorry for the inconvenience but we’re performing some maintenance at the moment, we’ll be back online shortly!
— Team Harmoney"
The new dashboard preview is avaliable, not much is avaliable yet but it does look like they will include an export function.
There seems to be huge changes to harmoney management in many areas.
Comparing here
http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...ndroid-samsung
To here
https://www.harmoney.com/about-us
Seems to to indicate changes with neil as well as
CTO/CIO
marketing
general manager
And prob more but it is a little hard to compare from a cellphone.
No I use my own spreadsheets.
I think the flow of new loans is pretty weak at present. I have had a few loans fully paid off so want to reinvest but the pickings are thin. I have used a strategy of not investing when income is more than 10% of the loan and just about all of them fit in that category now; I think a higher proportion than earlier on.
Really struggling. Only one this morning and it only have 7 notes free.
I dont have much invested but basically need to buy 1 or 2 notes each day. I really do notice the reduced selection recently and just before that, they were increasing supply through refinances which are starting to slow now (though 1 yesterday refinanced after only 3 payment!).
Yesterday I logged in and saw a grade A loan request and I quickly invested my surplus, they seem to disappear like hot cakes!
What I thought would be handy is an auto reinvest, kind of like quick invest but it just does it automatically when you have enough cash available for a new note.
They've just dumped 20 new loans in so not to bad - will see how quickly they get snapped up.
I want to try Harmoney and have just tried to credit money and allow it to be direct debited, but I think I am going to have to wait three days for funds to clear before I can start.
it all seems to good to be true, however I guess the reality will sink in when the defaults start happening
Harmoney works best drip feeding a small amount in each week, good luck transferring in large one off amounts.
Those 20 loans from this morning are gone, only 2 now showing.
I find the direct transfer normally goes through the next day but the DD takes a few.
Defaults are the big unknown. I have had a few but the have been more than compensated. Time will tell if thats the still the case.
Agree. Only put in a bit at a time as you want to be fully invested as soon as and dont want to be forced to take loans you dont want to. If you dont want an A and B, you are currently out of luck but there was was a time when there were no A going though. The other annoying thing is you have no idea when they will they will upload more loans so unless you have time to check a few times a day, you may miss your opportunity.
Whats the best strategy?
I am going to invest in each loan .
I started at 4 notes for each but have now switched down to one note, but I think it will take too long , I may have to increase.
On average how many loans come up for investment per week?
If I invest in each new loan for 60mnths I will be visiting the website a lot.
Anyway I hopes it better tgan my forrays into FOREX and Canadian oik juniors.
My best investment has been the house I bought.
True - especially if you have a house in Auckland. How long Auckland house price rises will continue to exceed historical averages is uncertain.
Your returns from Harmoney are taxed at your marginal income tax rate, whereas with real estate all your capital appreciation and, if you are the owner-occupier, the benefits of being an owner-occupier are tax-free. With Harmoney all the gross interest is taxed, then you still need to pay the service charges and deduct from your returns any defaults, so you could end up paying more than 33% tax during the course of the year on your actual net investment returns. In addition to the uncertainty of actual default rates, especially as the economy comes in for tougher times.