@leesal > 1 month today... Did you ever get in @ 9%??
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Actually got into 4 x Loans @ LC over the last 7 days....
However still have funds there to invest more into.
Have read on the HM thread about lack of loans..... LC has been much quieter too since the beginning of this month!
Have heard their Ad's over the radio often everyday recently...
Today @ SM there is Funding from Lenders on offer for 5 Year Loans at a new low of 8%.
Attachment 9744
Very much so,Doing this with Lending Crowd as there is a similar problem there
I've never had to wait this long to get an investment filled and at low interest rates too.
Anybody else using the SM App on Android ( Samsung phone ) and not getting the App Notofications when there is a Credit to the account??
Am running two different accounts and both have the same Error = Lack of App Notification ( maybe see one once a week only - where there may have been 4 credits that week )
SM have not been too helpful trying to blame the phone!! However the phone has been changed twice in the last year and the problem has been sighted over all 3 phones!!
I'm excited about the major changes coming to the SM platform over the next few weeks. I'm hoping this will increase the number of loans available for investment
So some big changes coming then... I assume they are targeting their existing mortgage base for these new homeowner loans.
SM looking like a very conservative investment now. Max rate 8.5% with double protection being first the reserve fund and security on the homeowner loans.
Would I be right in assuming that most who take out the homeowner loans will consolidate into their mortgage, at which point SM looks very much like one year term deposits on slightly higher rates.
Personally this is too low risk / low return for me. One assumes they are targeting big sums held on term deposit.
The new changes will give people more investment options and that's a good thing. 6.00% p.a. is still better than 3.50% p.a. bank term deposit
Not what I said.
Based on the email they sent out it appears SM are positioning themselves further away from Harmoney at the lower returns end of the market attempting to entice people with large sums tied up in term deposits who can earn much greater returns for a minimal increase in risk while keeping liquidity. Looks to be a great opportunity for these people. Looks to be a great opportunity for SM as well to leverage off their mortgage business as customer growth for them based off small retail investors on debt consold's is likely limited.
I applaud SM's retail only focus and will continue to reinvest the funds I have in them currently - being roughly 5% of my portfolio and the only real cash investment held as hedging. But I won't be introducing anything further for these new loans at 6-8% gross is too conservative for someone in my age bracket.
Anyone else having trouble logging into Squirrel today? Can't get the login screen either on Edge or Chrome.
Selling two loans-
1. $477.02 @ 8.5% (4yrs, 10mnths)
2. $464.39 @ 8.35% (4yrs, 5mnths)
They're available on the secondary market now.
At this stage of the cycle it may well be the time to de-risk. After years of low interest rates and quantative easing, after a prolonged boom in asset prices including real estate and share prices, 8% gross pa going forward for the next few years could be a good return.
Has Anyone got an order filled at the 'good old day' rates of 9% in say the last 5 months??
9% no longer exists. the highest rate is 8.5% for 5-7 years. It appears that the fastest way to get your money invested and working for you is 6% for 1 year which is still double what you get for a bank term deposit.
We must be looking at different pages!! 5-7 Years still 133K waiting to go!!
Attachment 10154
Has anybody managed to invest in loans for 5-7 or 2-3 years recently? If so, at what rate?
Currently there is $131k for 1 year awaiting funding.
I'm thinking that it would be better to put money to work now and get 6% return instead of waiting for weeks/months for a higher return.
What y'all think?
Hi icyfire. I'm CFO at Squirrel.
We are definitely still getting loans pushed through in the 5-7 and 2-3 year categories - around 60% of the new lending this month.
The loans funded in the 5-7 year bucket this month have had an average investor rate of 8.14% and 7.03% for the 2-3 year loans.
I would encourage you to look at the 1 year loans for at least a portion of your investment portfolio. We have a strong pipeline in that space and as you highlight - you can have your money invested almost immediately with the $131k of loans currently awaiting funding.
The key feature of these one-year investments (other than the lower return of-course) is that it is interest only for the first 12 months - so investments don't get repaid quite so quickly.
Decided to venture over here for a bit of diversity, will see how it goes but if I dont get any bites after a few weeks I'll be out.
FY2019 RWT Tax Certificates are already available Online for Download :)
Anyone having any luck at all with Squirrel recently? The loan volume appears to have collapsed, even more so than Harmoney.
I wonder if loan volume has dropped as a result of the fall in house sales and as a result of drop in loan demand more generally. It would be interesting to see if bank lending has fallen too. Also perhaps some people are waiting to see if there are major tax reforms as a result of the TRG report before taking on loans.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/...ectid=12221621
Looks like high interest loans available on Squirrel secondary market, but buyers queuing up for lesser interest rates. Unaware? Does Squirrel inform its investors, I wonder ...
Hey there beacon.
Thought I would jump in and respond to your post - its a good question to raise...
Loans that appear on the Squirrel P2P Secondary Market will generally get matched automatically on the following basis:
Investor Interest Rate
The new Investor(s) must have an Investment Order with an interest rate that is less than or equal to the interest rate of the investment being sold. In this regard, a matched Investor that had an Investment Order with a lower interest rate will benefit by receiving the higher interest rate on the investment being sold. The platform will match from the lowest interest rate to the highest.
Investment Term
An Investor will automatically be matched to and transferred into an investment that is being sold if their Investment Order matches the amount (greater than or equal to) and interest rate (less than or equal to) - noting the selection order mentioned above. The Investment Term remaining on the investment to be sold must be within 3 months of their requested term for 24-month and 36-month Investment Orders or 12 months for 60-month Investment Orders. For example,an Investor with an Investment Order for 36 months will automatically be matched to an investment being sold with 34 months remaining (assuming the Investor Interest Rate criteria is met). An email will be sent to anew investor to accept or decline an investment when the remaining term on an investment that is for sale is outside this tolerance.
Loans that have experienced a credit event
Investments being sold where the underlying Loan has suffered a Credit Event (i.e. missed repayment(s),hardship, default) will not be automatically matched to an Investment Order and instead an email will be sent to the new Investor disclosing the details of the Credit Event associated with the Loan and providing an opportunity to accept or decline the investment on that basis. Under this scenario, a new Investor continues to benefit from the protection offered by the Reserve Fund and does not directly bear the credit risk of the underlying Loan to which they are investing.
When you see loans sitting on the secondary market for longer than an hour or so, it is usually because the remaining term on the loan slips outside the tolerances for auto matching above, or the loan being sold has had some form of credit event. In those cases, the platform will be waiting for confirmation from the investor(s) who best match the loan (one way or the other).
Hope this answers the 'wondering' from your post a few weeks back.
Cheers,
Tim (CFO at Squirrel)
Thanks for bringing this to my attention @beacon – to my knowledge we've not heard from any investor about this issue previously so we’re digging into this to see what might be causing delays with transfer requests.
From my initial review, it looks like there could be a bottleneck in our processing when the investment up for transfer doesn’t meet the automatic transfer criteria outlined in the Secondary Market Rules - usually because the remaining term on the investment is below the term tolerances or the loan the investment relates to has had a credit event at some point.
What happens in those scenario's is that investors are offered the investment one by one until someone accepts i.e. if first investor declines the offer, it is offered to the next investor in the queue and so on with each investor given 24 hours to accept or decline. It is that process that looks to be causing delays – so the team are working through some examples to see what we can do to speed the process up which may include adjusting the tolerances or perhaps offering the investment to a wider group in the first instance.
It looks like the average transfer time this year is around 2 days - but there is certainly evidence that investments are taking a lot longer than that to shift when the scenarios above present.
I will report back when we get to the bottom of the issue and have a resolution.
A credit event is really irrelevant to an investor because of the reserve fund. That is why they pay the 2% extra for every loan (good or bad), don't they?
The remaining investment term is also really irrelevant to an investor (except for the higher interest rate higher term loans offer alongwith greater probability of greater longevity) because these loans can be repaid early without penalty irrespective of investment term anyway.
So, if dozens of loans are sitting in your secondary market unsold for weeks (even months for the odd ones, I've heard) at 8%+ when investors are queuing to be filled at 6%, there are definitely serious bottlenecks in your system. Interestingly, this is when your webpage apologizes for investment delays on account of loan demand exceeding supply.
I'm also told your secondary market is opaque to most of your investors at most times, because secondary market loans at rates higher than your bidding range are rarely visible to your investors. Perhaps sunlight will do the Squirrel loans some good. :)
Hi Beacon - you are correct regarding the relatively low relevance of the credit event disclosure given our reserve fund model, that disclosure is however a condition of our secondary market licence – so we can’t avoid doing that unfortunately.
I also agree with your feedback regarding the remaining investment term - and we are currently looking into widening the remaining term thresholds for automatic matching.
Regarding the small number of investments that are moving slowly through the secondary market process, we are working hard to scope the technical resolution that will help them move through quicker and should have something ready to go in the next few weeks. This particular change isn't going to solve our supply/demand issue though I am sorry and it won't get an investor bidding into a one-year interest-only loan at 6% get into a P&I term loan at 8%+.
In the meantime, I would encourage investors to check their junk emails for Squirrel Money emails with the subject “We’ve found an investment that matches your criteria” – that is the notification we send out when an investment outside the automatic matching criteria is available to you - but you have to physically accept it before the platform will match you up. These emails often find their way into junk email folders and aren’t being seen and in some circumstances our system is re-sending them each day until they are – so we’re also looking at better ways to notify investors of this sort of thing and to stop the looping that seems to be occurring.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by opaque but, by design, investors generally won’t/shouldn't notice that they have been matched to a secondary market loan if the investment meets the automatic matching criteria outlined in our Secondary Market Rules document. Yes, on occasion they may benefit from the higher rates if the investment being offered for transfer is one from more than a couple of years ago, but that is just the luck of the draw. The Squirrel platform wasn’t designed so that those investments can be targeted per se, they just go to the best matched investor in the queue. To me, that seems the fairest approach don't you agree?
Finally, I appreciate the feedback @beacon, it really can help improve the platform for all investors.
How is your secondary market fair to loan vendors who have to sacrifice 1% interest as loan sale fee but still have to wait weeks or months to receive their funds back? Kind of waters down the benefit of a secondary market a lot, with investors not knowing when they'll be able to exit their investment (if at all!)
Banks/finance cos. charge the 1% break/penalty fee too but their redemptions are instantaneous. Your model is different, but Squirrel pitches itself as better than these in the first place to justify its comparatively lower interest rates vs the NZ P2P sector, isn't it?
I think if no acceptance confirmation emails were needed from the investor for making the initial investment in a loan (making your process automatic), then none should be needed for investing in the secondary market loans either (making this process automatic), since you do not disclose loan details at initial investment anyway and acknowledge that credit events and loan terms don't really disadvantage a secondary market loan buyer. In fact, everyone then gets a chance to benefit from an improved rate (rather than just the lucky guy who happened to check his junk mail folder in time). Now that would be fairer, don't you think?
Anyway, good to see that you seem genuinely interested in listening to feedback and making some effort to improve your platform.
Thanks @beacon. Just to clarify, as I stated above, the confirmation email is only required if: 1) the loan has had a missed payment or the like at some point, or 2) the remaining term of the investment is outside of the automatic matching rules documented in the Secondary Market Rules. The first criteria is mandated by the FMA as part of our licence to operate the secondary market - so we have no discretion with that, the second forms part of the rules we thought appropriate when launching the secondary market - so we can and will be amending that one fairly soon to help improve the efficiency of the secondary market.
The point you make about the 'lucky guy who happened to check his junk mail' isn't quite right - the 'lucky guy' as you put it is actually the best matched investor for that investment per the Secondary Market Rules - effectively the investor at the front of the queue - so yes I do think that is the fairest approach and I do not see that changing. EDITED - perhaps we could look at offering it to a larger group, say the top 10 investors in the queue - that would presumably speed up the transfer process.
Finally, the investment propositions and platform functionality available in the market clearly varies between P2P providers and the various financial institutions about – and yes, the rates our investors have achieved may be lower than some others – but ultimately it comes down to investor risk appetite and what features of each platform they value.
We’ll keep working on the resolution for the small number of investments travelling slowly through the secondary market – and I’ll let you all know when its resolved.
All the best with your investing.
Any one recently Invested funds @ 7.5% ( 5 - 7 Year Loans )...... What is the current wait time like > From placing Funds to Order being Fulfilled??
I see that there is currently over 450K waiting in the 7% Rate queue
~$7500 fulfilled roughly 3 weeks ago after about a month on offer. It was taken up in 2 lots.
Big changes coming based on the email I got today.
Good to see Squirrel doubling down on 100% retail P2P considering the news re Harmoney.
Hi @beacon - just thought I'd provide an update on the delays in the secondary market.
We have investigated the causes of slow investment transfers and identified a bunch of improvements and some system fixes that we can implement to improve the efficiency of the secondary market. A number of these have already been moved into production and we have now cleared all investments offered for sale before today other than one small investment that has a credit event associated with it that has been out for transfer for a few weeks.
In addition to the tweaks to software and the process, we have implemented more regular monitoring of any investments that might get ‘stuck’ in the process. The reasons for things getting stuck look to be quite complicated as they seem to require a number of seemingly unrelated factors that come together and collectively that contribute to bottlenecks – but the most likely reason we've seen looks to be an investor either not seeing the offer emails or not quite understanding what they are being offered. We have recently started contacting those investors via phone to explain the situation and walk them through it to some form of conclusion.
Using email notifications has also clearly created issues with investors not seeing them if they go into a spam folder etc. To remedy that situation, we are looking at options around push notifications via our mobile apps which we think will greatly improve the efficiency of that notification process. That isn’t able to be implemented immediately though unfortunately.
Finally, it became clear that our automatic matching rules resulted in too many unnecessary exceptions so we have scoped some widening of the acceptable tolerances (usually remaining term related) to more pragmatic levels and are planning to roll out those amendments in the next few weeks which will further improve the efficiency of the secondary market.
It is fair to say that this has proven to be a bigger can of worms than I anticipated when we first started communicating – but it has been a valuable process and has greatly improved this aspect of our platform - so thanks for all your feedback!
Tim
I see that the Squirrel Reserve Fund has dropped since I last looked about a month ago. If it continues to drop, can Squirrel increase the proportion of interest that is credited to the reserve fund, or do thy have to wait until such time that 100% of the interest is needed to be diverted to the reserve fund to cover defaults?
With Corona Virus already causing economic issues, there could be borrowers under stress.
Squirrel alter the % rate payable, often.
However I doubt that they will change it enough to keep up, if Bad Loans come in faster than in the past.
It must be expected that Bad Loans will come in fast from now on, as Forestry, Hospitality, Travel and Hotel Industries all start to take a Hit!!
I personally took a decision 2 weeks ago not to invest any more in to P2P Loans at this time.
I suspect the Squirrel Reserve Fund is going to come under a real stress test this year if the predicated recession occurs.
@morphs - Yes, for sure it will.
Below is the reserve fund figures as of this morning.
So just $485,958 of Bad loans......... and the Reserve Fund is at ZERO!!
Attachment 11111
Attachment 11114
2020 RWT Certificares already available for member download.....
Some defensive PR from Squirrel in the mailbox this arvo ... must be feeling the pinch!
Quote:
Case study 1
Investing class: Home Loans
A mortgage for an experienced property investor
The first loan on our platform is for $1.4m and is secured over two properties in Point Chevalier, Auckland with $1.1m in security over each. It has a 70% loan to value ratio.
Our credit policy:
Maximum loan to value ratio of 80%
Maximum loan of $1m per property and a total limit of $2m
With our first Home Loan on the platform, the borrower owns $31m in property and has $12m in lending.
The funds borrowed from Squirrel are for working capital and the client is holding $3m in cash. The customer’s property portfolio is diversified and generates over $1m p.a. of income. He has also provided a personal guarantee on the loan. This means that there is someone standing behind the loan who can guarantee the payments at a personal level, similar to when a parent acts as a guarantor on a home loan for their children.
The reason the client borrowed from Squirrel is that banks treat them as a commercial client and will only lend against the income of the property they have security over and with too many covenants. He was prepared to pay a bit more for a simpler borrowing solution.
We felt this mortgage was low risk because:
The client has strong underlying income from a diversified property portfolio
They are carrying a low level of gearing (low LVR)
The security is a first residential mortgage with a loan to value ratio on the properties of 70% and a personal guarantee from the borrower
The borrower holds significant working capital and undrawn revolving credits (meaning he has cash available to him)
You can invest into this mortgage now. The investor return is 4.0% p.a. variable, and you can find out lots more about this investment class from our investor handbook here.
This loan is also protected by our Home Loan Reserve Fund, which protects investors from loan arrears and loan defaults.
Currently the situation must be very toght for Suirrel Money, I have never before heard them advertising on the radio in NZ.
However over the last month they are pushing loans and webinars to learn more.
They have that massive $1.3M house loan at 4%..... and it looks like the majority of would be investros are NOT interested in taking a slice of it!!
Today received an Email from Squirrel Offering TO PAY us Investors $500 to $1,000 to get into Property \ Business Loans....
Wow they are getting very very Deperate now...
Even more reason to stay away!!!!
4% Return for investing in Home Loans at this point in time - No Thanks - What if the house value drops by 15% and ONLY 100K in Reserve Fund!!
5% Return on a Business Loan - NO Way - Investing in Business Loans at this time with only ONLY 100K in Reserve Fund!!
6% - 7% in Personal Loans - Maybe - Have 500K in Reserve Fund ( best risk ) however better returns elsewhere in P2P
Attachment 11619
Attachment 11620
Don't get me wrong.... SM is still the ONLY P2P Lender I have had NO Capital Losses with.... ( Thanks to their Persoanl Loan Reserve Fund )
It's just their offerings have changed \ evolved over time ( where other P2P Lenders have not so much ) and what they now offer Investors is no longer attractive to myself....
Hi Saamee,
You're assessing a reserve fund against low LVR lending secured over property. They are totally different things.
The average expected credit loss rate on a residential house book is 0.0005%. Over $150 billion of prime residential mortgage have been sold to investors in Australia with no investor losses. Even in Ireland during the GFC the loss rate of residential mortgages was only 5% and that was with a 50% drop in house prices and 1 in 10 households defaulting and 50% of new lending with deposits less than 20%. The UK had a loss rate 0.50% over the same timeframe.
Banks are lending at 2.70% on home loans, and we are paying investors 4%. The only reason we can do that is we are targeting older borrowers with very low LVRs who the banks tend to neglect. With the amount of equity in these properties we don't need reserves for losses, just to cover any arrears. The reason we are publishing examples in the blog is to add colour to the types of loans we are doing so investors can see that for themselves. It's purely to educate the market.
The Business Property Loan is lending on simple residential builds with unconditional buyers on the end of the transaction deposit paid. Benefit of buyer, deposit paid, 20% equity in transaction, and guarantee from build franchise.
These products won't be for everyone and certainly not right for anyone chasing higher risk/returns.
As for us being desperate, hardly.
Squirrel write over $1 billion of mortgages each year as a mortgage broker. We can now provide some of those through to the investor platform and already have $10m that we have pre-funded with our own facilities to pass down to the platform. We are keen to get investors engaging in this new investment class and so are promoting it.
Alternatively we could just get a big wholesale facility funding them at <4.00% and not bother about retail investors i.e. do a Harmoney. We're publicly committed to P2P which means we have to spend money promoting it and encouraging it to gradually grow.
How long are people currently waiting to have their order filled for Personal Loans @ 7.5%??
I see that there is 343K in the queue as of today....
Attachment 11903
Dave Tyrer here from Squirrel. I estimate a 2 week wait at present in the 5-7year personal loan term. Hope that helps.[/QUOTE]
@DT >> Thanx for the 'Inside reply' ;)
So currently about 175K a week is being filled @ that rate....
Rgds
Just put some 9% Loans on the Secondary market......
Hi @Bjauck. The wait for 5 - 7yr investments is roughly 4 - 5 weeks at present. We have a new lending product coming to market very soon that will help shorten wait times in this term. Worth mentioning that wait times in the 1year space are much shorter 1 - 2 weeks at present. We also have investments available in the Home Loan and Business Property Loan investment classes, so no wait time for these ones.
Regarding loan repayments and Covid: our borrower arrears rate is running about 4%, and there are 9 loans in hardship at present. We know the average market arrears rate for personal loans is running between 7 - 8%. The personal loan reserve fund is higher today than it was 12months ago, with a coverage ratio of over 4% (disclosed on the investor tab on our website).
Hope that answers your questions.
Thanks
Dave
Thanks for your reply DT. It sounds to be in a good position.
Hi, I mentioned in my previous post that Squirrel was launching a new lending product, and here it is http://www.squirrel.co.nz/squirrel-loans/launchpad
For those who are investors with Squirrel, we emailed an investor update last night that contains further information.
From an p2p investor perspective, part of this loan will fall into our personal loan investment class with a 5year term. Based on the scale of our mortgage advice team, we believe we will see growth in demand for investor funding in this term. We represent 3.2% of all first home buyers in NZ already, and we believe we can help more people in this part of the market with this proposition.
Interested in your thoughts!
Hi DT
An interesting concept. Could you please answer the following questions?
Do many prospective buyer fit the requirements particularly in relation to the responsible lending requirements?
How is the equity loan secured (e.g. 2nd mortgage, caveat, other or unsecured)
Presumably, should house prices tank resulting in a negative equity and forced sale event, the equity loan lenders risk taking a bath while the first mortgagee may fare OK?
Hi Joker, here are some answers:
1. If we think about segments within the first home buyer market, Launchpad can help those who are looking at property above the Kaianga Ora thresholds. It's hard to exactly determine the size of the target segment, but we know almost $1b per month is lent to First Home Buyers. Primarily the people we will help will be in metro locations given the Kaianga Ora thresholds. It's worth noting that Squirrel Mortgage Advisors are salary based (not commission), so they are there to find the right deal for our customers, if Launchpad is not the right product for the situation, it will not be offered.
2. The Equity Loan will be secured using a 2nd Mortgage
3. Ultimately risk comes down to whether the borrower chooses to make their loan payments. A borrower could be in a negative equity situation and still making their loan payments. The thing I will be most closely watching will be the unemployment rate. We've taken some extreme scenarios into our modelling, and have we believe a good handle on how the portfolio will perform under various loads. For Squirrel, our starting point is charge a reserve levy on all these loans at a rate that is higher than our modelling suggests the risk will be, so we're erring on the side of caution.
Credit risk is determined by the probability of default * loss given default. You can work through various permutations of this.
Interesting to see how this works out. Looks good to me as it bypasses government restrictions around price, income, Kiwisaver, first home, mortgage insurance etc. And focuses on households who actually have a good shot at home ownership if the deposit requirements are loosened.
So some innovative thinking from Squirrel.
The government First Home scheme has a serious flaw IMO as a combination of very low deposit and low-ish income doesn't allow for much leeway if something goes wrong. Like employment or relationship changes, illness, babies. Yes there is mortgage insurance part paid for by taxpayers, but AFAIK this protects the mortgagee and not necessarily the mortgagor. (Is that right?)
Edited to add - there are likely to be quite a lot of rentals up for sale once the latest changes kick in and owners freak out. Many could well be suitable for FHBs less constricted by current rules.
What is your experience with expected vs actual term of investment on the Squirrel platform? I've made 10 investments over the past 16 months or so across several type classes for various amounts and only 2 have run to full term. The result being ROI received has been tracking about 45% less than anticipated.
Hi @malreid, I look after Squirrels lending and investment business.
For Home Loans and Construction Loans, we do have loans that pay back early and we always have new loans available, so you should be able to remain invested at all times.
For Personal Loans, the 1 year term has a high prepayment rate and this means there is then a wait time in the queue. For the 2-3 and 5-7 year terms the prepayment rate is a lot lower so there should be less issues with having to reinvest. Wait times for the 1year term are currently 1 - 2 weeks, and the 5 - 7 year term is around 30days.
Last but not least, because Squirrel has Reserve Funds in place behind all investments, they help protect you in the event that a loan misses a payment or defaults. To date, no investor has missed the return of their principal or their interest.
Happy to take any other questions.
Can anyone tell me what the 'expected waiting time' currently is to get into the 5 - 7 year loans is?
Looks like Squirrel has upgraded theri user interface - you used to be able to see the size of the funds ahead of you but now cannot find?
Thanx in advance.
Hi @Saamee, current waiting time is approximately 2-3 weeks for 5-7year loans. There is ~$350k in the queue at present in that term. You should be able to see how much money is in front of you when you've placed an order. I'll take a look at the way we're displaying this information and see if we can improve it. We have made quite a few improvements to the way we display information recently, maybe we missed something in this space.
You might also have noticed that we've reduced the minimum investment amount to $100!
Hey DT,
Appreciate the swift reply.
Yep. One used to be able to see BEFORE you placed an order.
I have been away form Squirrel for over 12 months riight now, but looking to invest once again.
It sure would be good to view the sie of funds in the queue in front of me BEFORE an order is placed. This used to be shown! :(
@saamee we've updated the information on the investment order pages to address your concern (via the browser). You can see the info in the mobile app also. We're also better reporting what's in the pipeline for our three investment categories. Tell me what you think!
Happy to take feedback from anyone else also.
I was reading the thread on General Capital today. Squirrels loan book is now a smidge below $120m having grown 69% over the last 12 months - so about the same size as General Capital. Our NIM is slimmer than General Capital because we're paying investors more. Squirrel has a very different approach to managing credit risk (proactively and transparently reserving) and liquidity risk largely sits with investors compared with a traditional finance company. Anyone have views on this?
Hey @DT
I think what you have just done is AMAZING and shows real flexibility from SM :)
Attachment 14280
Hi all, we've just added interest to our Call Account. Our investors will now start earning 3.50% p.a., no fees, no hoops, no tiering of interest. Just a straight up flat rate on every dollar, with interest paid monthly. The returns come from the money sitting in a bank account with a NZ bank, and you don't have to take term investments in order to earn the interest.
So, if you're looking for a place to park emergency funds, or hold cash for a bit, check it out!
Added benefit for those investors in personal loans, you'll now start earning interest while your money is waiting in the investment queue.
Happy to take any questions.
That is great news and I have already send some funds across from a lower earning Bank!!
Hey DT,
My New deposit has hit and shown up - all cool.
However in the SM Email you mentioned the interest current Rate, that being 3.5%
On the Website \ App I am unable to find the Call Account Interest rate posted anywhere.
Of course in time the Call Account rate will change...
It would be good to be able to sight the up to date rate on the Website \ App.
Can you point me to where it is shown?
Many thanks.
Would be great to see the On Call Interest rate on this TAB ( see attachment )
Attachment 14438
Hi @saamee, I had a decision to make, do I:
1. Wait until we have the interest rate visible for investors on the screens you point out before releasing the feature; or
2. Get it out there and then follow up with the work on Squirrel Online (what you see when you log-in).
My conclusion was to do number 2 so our investors start getting the benefit. All the changes to Squirrel Online and our mobile app are scoped and being worked on. You'll see the changes progressively released over the next 3 - 4 weeks. Our website (squirrel.co.nz) is up to date and you can find the interest rate there, head to the 'save and invest' tab.
Hopefully you enjoy the benefits!
Hey that is welcome news :)
Taking option #2 I'm sure was the correct choice!
You guys are very innovative.
Nice one Squirrel.....
Very fast response to the Reserve Bank rate rise....
Attachment 14481
Hi Saamee, we'll generally be quick to increase or decrease the rate when the OCR moves.
Go on then Mate, some other areas deserve some long waiting rises too 😉
Hi Mike, we're reviewing the remainder of our rates at present and expect to make decisions over the next week. I probably should have added that it's the On-call Account interest rates that will be very responsive to OCR moves.
Been using the Squirrel On Call facility for approx 1 month now.
Easy peasy... I Xfer funds in about 6pm and if needed the next day Xfer them back out ( they arrive approx 2 hours later )
Squirrel now paying 5% just for keeping your funds 'On Call'.....
Attachment 14537
Squirrel already has upped their 'On Call' rate to 5.25%
Good Job Squirrel \ DT :)
Nice - have recommended the on call account to a few friends and colleagues now.
The 2023 \ 2024 RWT Tax certificates are already available for Download....
Great work Squirrel....
By the way their Website has changed - Now hidden under Reporting > Tax Certificates.....
Wow, no mucking about here :t_up: Wonder what sort of palaver will be involved getting same out of LC in a timely fashion. Last year was almost shambolic....:bored:
We aim to please.
Any feedback on the improvements to our look and feel from any of you?