Harmoney

[icyfire]

Harmoney trickles just enough loans to the retail investors so it can keep its p2p license in order to con potential borrowers into believing that Harmoney is still a p2p lending platform sticking it to the banks IMO.

[RMJH]

I think you guys may be being a bit hard on Harmoney and it's backers. Sure we would like more loans but they put their balls on the line setting up the industry and have posted significant cash losses to date. They have to find a way to make it work for them. Personally I would prefer a bigger pie with lower rates but not at the expense of loose credit procedures. This is what P2P promised but is yet to deliver here. Zopa in UK is going great guns.

[beacon]

I think you guys may be being a bit hard on Harmoney and it's backers. Sure we would like more loans but they put their balls on the line setting up the industry and have posted significant cash losses to date. They have to find a way to make it work for them. Personally I would prefer a bigger pie with lower rates but not at the expense of loose credit procedures. This is what P2P promised but is yet to deliver here. Zopa in UK is going great guns.

Harmoney deserves credit as well as a fair share of the P2P market and profits for pioneering P2P in NZ, but they will reap those rewards only if they last the distance. They have the potential, but they risk disenchanting retail investors, if the quantum of daily order fills are not worth the time and hassle it takes for retail to place them.

Start-up losses go with setting up any business - big or small, and can take years to breakeven. The profit trajectory for Harmoney is clear, so let the losses not be an excuse to not play fair or lift the quality game. The NZ unsecured lending pie is getting bigger with increasing market awareness, population and credit growth, as well as the recent RBNZ moves to constrain high-risk behaviours at mainstream banks.

Harmoney has benefitted from the first mover advantage. The question is, will Harmoney be around long enough in its current avatar, to reap the benefits if it keeps toying with the very definitions of the industry it chose to operate in?

[leesal]

Do Borrowers really care whether money is lent from peers, or institutions?? I rather suspect HM think not.

The personally addressed lending marketing literature I received this week only mentioned they're P2P in the smallprint. Instead they're marketed the simplicity of applying online, the membership (308,000 members), and $1 billion funded.

Here is a graph of the huge differences between late last year and early this. Last year I funded 80 loans a week while being picky, this year struggle to get 20 per a week including stuff I normally wouldn't touch with a bargepole.

Capture.JPG

HM volume over time stats show lending is still strong(between 300-400 per week), no drop-off. While institutional lending is upto 85%.

[Wsp]

For many months, I remember the platform RAR as below 10. From my records (I take a snapshot of my dashboard every month) the platform RAR was 9.98% at 31 May 2018 and had been dropping since then to as low as 9.72 at the end of 2018. Suddenly it is now above 10. Looking at the graph in Market Stats, the platform RAR (in the present graph) had stayed above 10% throughout. So the line had been moved up the last few days!! Occasionally, I also record down the Retail RAR and it seems the graph had been changed as well for the Retail RAR. Wonder what is the rationale for them tweaking it.

You were right

This was published by Harmoney

RAR Correction
By Nitin Prasad. Posted 22 February 2019.

There has been a correction made to the RAR reported on the website. This impacts both the Platform RAR numbers (Retail, Institutional, Combined) and your personal RAR. The net impact on Platform RAR is an increase of 0.12% (12bps) across all lenders with some lenders negatively impacted and some positively impacted. Smaller accounts with minimal diversification may see a larger change in RAR. Your individual RAR will be updated in your dashboard. This is a reporting correction and does not impact your cash or principal balance.

[myles]

Taking stock of Harmoney's poor loan availability over the last 4-5 months and have decided to move some money out.

Having had a quick look around of what's available, Squirrel looks to be an easy choice for minimal effort to get some 'better than bank' returns. Any other suggestions?

I stopped investing in Lending Crowd quite some time ago as I felt their platform was broken - when you don't have time to review a loan before investing, it's simply to much of a risk (my net average return on LC is listed as 13.99% on a high of around $5K down to about $1K now).

Haven't posted a summary of my Harmoney results for a while (100K invested almost 2 years ago):

status.jpg

With near $20K doing nothing at the moment means I'm better off getting ~7% elsewhere...

My calculated return (XIRR) for the investment is currently at 14.61% (dropping at the moment due to non invested $'s). That value includes tax, but not tax deductions, so actual is a little higher.

I have another Harmoney account with a more conservative loan spread (higher in C's) which has a RAR of 15.02%, but it suffers from the same issue of availability of loans and I've pulled some $'s out of it already.

I hope things change - either more loans, or Harmoney swing the Wholesale:Retail ratio back a bit, but I can't hold out any longer...

[beacon]

Taking stock of Harmoney's poor loan availability over the last 4-5 months and have decided to move some money out. Having had a quick look around of what's available, Squirrel looks to be an easy choice for minimal effort to get some 'better than bank' returns. Any other suggestions?




... it suffers from the same issue of availability of loans and I've pulled some $'s out of it already. I hope things change - either more loans, or Harmoney swing the Wholesale:Retail ratio back a bit, but I can't hold out any longer...

I've pulled out 10% of my capital too recently, for the same reasons. Squirrel return simply became unappealing to me, especially after their latest changes. Frustrated capital frequently jumps the Q there too.


Approximately 6 months ago, Cool Bear had suggested I look at Zagga. I don't know how well others are doing there, but I've only been able to invest in a couple of loans there, in that time.


So, unless the industry watchdogs lift their game, P2P in NZ looks set to be dominated by the big fish. A bit sad, that smaller investors can't even invest easily in the asset class that seemed tailor-made for them.

[leesal]

4 loans on this morning, most I've seen together for a few weeks.

Two of them have defaults though (strangely both the defaults graded as B's)

Hopefully the beginning of better availability?

[leesal]

I've pulled out 10% of my capital too recently, for the same reasons. Squirrel return simply became unappealing to me, especially after their latest changes. Frustrated capital frequently jumps the Q there too.


Approximately 6 months ago, Cool Bear had suggested I look at Zagga. I don't know how well others are doing there, but I've only been able to invest in a couple of loans there, in that time.


So, unless the industry watchdogs lift their game, P2P in NZ looks set to be dominated by the big fish. A bit sad, that smaller investors can't even invest easily in the asset class that seemed tailor-made for them.

Re squirrel. Completely agree that the returns aren't great, although I'd only ever use to poke money their during the short term and sell on the secondary when options pick up elsewhere.

However, the queue jumpers is a real problem. Have had a couple of orders on - 8.25% for about a couple of weeks and a second at 8.00% for just over a week, neither have been filled. Theres a good chance the frustrated capital may end up being yours!

Maybe Zagga is worth looking at, don't know the first thing about it.

[CageyB]

Taking stock of Harmoney's poor loan availability over the last 4-5 months and have decided to move some money out.

Having had a quick look around of what's available, Squirrel looks to be an easy choice for minimal effort to get some 'better than bank' returns. Any other suggestions?

I've been putting money into Squirrel rather than Harmoney for a while, but Squirrel, too, seems to be dropping off in loan availability lately. I had been using their 6% 1-year loans as a source of better-than-term-deposit rates, but now even $500 can take a week or more to be taken up. My Harmoney account still has ~15% unallocated funds, and there's a couple of auto-lends per week, but the book as a whole is deflating slowly. I would also like to hear any other ideas.