FundingSecure Avis 174

I have been investing with FundingSecure for over a year now and have found it to be an excellent way to gain a great interest percentage rather than sitting in standard savings accounts receiving a measly percent.
I would highly recommend giving it a try. As with anything though, never put all your eggs in one basket, spread your investment around and receive a great return.

Richard and his company have been so good to me with their easy to arrange, no nonsense, straight forward to deal with lending and clear terms of repayment. I have done 2 deals with FundingSecure and have found them to be fast and responsive to my funding requirements . They are a very good company to deal with and I highly recommend them. Karim

Main points:
- Large and long established p2p platform
- Over £250 million loans issued
- All loans are lower risk secured loans
- Loan defaults are extremely rare
- Great loan availability, generally 200+ loans to choose from
- High interest rates up to mid 20's percent
- Minimum investment is low at £25
- ISA wrapper is available

FS are a manual investment platform - there is no "auto invest" function that you can just set up and forget about like for example funding circle or ratesetter. You can invest in loans in one of two ways:
Primary market - typical rates 12/13%. You get email notification of when the loan is going on sale so can plan ahead.
Secondary market - typical rates 18-22%. These are exactly the same loans as the primary market but are often sold at a discount. They can be listed by the seller at any time.
If you have the time to log on once or twice a day to check availability then FS are well worth a look, if not then stick to auto invest platforms but be prepared to accept much lower rates.

A long established and FULLY FCA REGULATED peer to peer lending company offering very well secured loans on (mostly) UK property assets. Patient investors can often find loans on the secondary market at yields above 15%, a truly exceptional return which would result in a doubling of your money every 5 years (these investments can be put into an ISA). The website is easy to use and all information is provided in a logical format. From a risk perspective it would be nice to see a bit more variety in the types of loan offered, but defaults have been so low that this is not really that much of an issue.

Returns are excellent at 10-13%, the platform is great and very easy to use and there are new loans all of the time. However, Funding Secure seem to be completely incapable of managing a loan portfolio. I was attracted by the short loan duration of just 180 days which allows you to get access to your money fairly quickly compared to average terms of 12-18 months in other platforms. However, FS don't push for renewals when these are needed and I have many loans which have exceeded 500 days.

What's worse - FS have no stick in such situations as they don't charge default interest and almost never take possession of the secured asset(s) or force a sale through auction for example. Updates are rare and mostly meaningless. "Loan expected to be repaid in full within the next 2 weeks" repeated 3 times over the course of 6-12 months with no result.

I am starting to divest to other platforms as the risk is too great at FS and I have completely lost confidence.

Good points: High interest rates plus bonus, easy to lend, easy to borrow, good web site.

Bad points: High proportion of bad loans and high loan to value ratios (particularly as interest is only paid on redemption). Lack of unbiased information, unreliable valuations (which prove too high when loans default) and Funding Secure seemingly unable to manage recovery effectively or provide adequate communication to lenders.

Worst points: Art loans appear to have lacked reasonable care for investors' interests, as apparent from the events in August 2018. The fact that they were made to the same individual was never disclosed. Now that they are in recovery Funding Secure state that they are not in a position to sell the items. My complaint to them has not resulted in any remedy or been addressed according to their own published complaints procedure..

Assessment: High interest rates + high risk of capital loss. Funding Secure seem to have weighted the operation to borrowers (and their own) benefit whilst exposing lenders to high risks which cannot be adequately assessed on the information provided.

A great combination of high interest rates (up to 25%) coupled with extremely low defaults (less than 0.5% capital lost through defaults). Cannot find anything else in the p2p universe that matches this risk/reward balance. The gold standard of p2p lending until something better comes along.

I use to consider F.S as a well-run P2P, but recently the defaults have risen and the meaningful updates have decreased, I have tried to get an update on a VIP unsecured loan,2 months overdue, I was told that no update is available, but it would be updated as and when information was available, looks like another default is about to be added to the long list, unfortunately, their valuations are widely exaggerated, I recommend a colleague to F.S, who had done the rounds trying to borrow against a plot of land,he couldn't believe his luck, with a bit of creative accounting has been able to borrow 4x the true value of the land, so take the valuations with a pinch of salt, I am on my way out of F.S, until they pay more attention to the interest of their lenders.

FundingSecure offer well secured loans (LTV in the 50-70% range) at very tempting interest rates - 12/13% in the primary market and up to 25% in the secondary market. The website is very user friendly and diversification is easy due to the huge selection of loans available - usually several hundred. They have an ISA available so all of the above interest can be earned tax free. Deposits and withdrawals are carried out on a timely basis, usually within a couple of hours.

FS suffer from a large loan stream of which the vast majority are building developments that they generally lack the capacity to manage, so very much "fire and forget" as a result a proportion of the loans go a bit wrong. Their other loans on cars and bling on the other hand end up in a locked store and cannot be "fire and forget" in these cases their management goes pretty well unless they need auctioning at which point the valuations can be a problem.

The least said about their boat loans the better.

My FundingSecure invesments outstrip any of my other p2p investments by a country mile due to the existence of a large and liquid secondary loan market. This regularly throws up opportunities with annualised rates of 20%+ and can be put into an ISA. The gross equivalent rates for basic/higher/additional rate taxpayers are in excess of 25%/33%/36%. A couple of months ago there was a flood of selling on the secondary market and rates of 40%+ gross were available. Make no mistake, some loans are pretty unattractive - 2nd/3rd etc charges, development land with no planning permission come to mind, but there is always a huge selection of loans (200+ at the moment) so you can be as selective as you like. Highly recommended.

I have been an investor with Funding Secure since it's inception. At the start, things worked well, loans repaid on time. However, as time has gone on loans are now not chased properly, defaults are increasing and my feeling is they do not have the caliber of staff to operate in the P2P marketplace now as they are too over- committed. Systems need improving, dialogue needs improvement. Be very careful, high interest rates equal high risk. Lost all confidence in Funding Secure now and am exiting asap.

I have invested with FundingSecure since November 2017. There are many new loans and it is easy to diversify but, unfortunately, the longer I have invested on the platform the lower my confidence has been.

Overdue loans are either not updated or the update is meaningless eg “the borrower is expecting to repay in the next 2 weeks”. This is repeated again and again on the same loan. FS seem to accept what borrowers tell them at face value. If I make enquiries with FS I am fobbed off. FS are very reluctant to sell assets securing loans. I wonder if they have no confidence in their own valuations and know that sale of the asset will not cover loan and interest

Currently the economic climate is fairly buoyant, I dread to think how they will cope in an economic downturn.

There are many better p2p platforms. Do not risk your money here.

Full review to follow but DO NOT INVEST with this company.

Their recklessness with lenders' money is criminal. Their valuations defy credulity and the resulting defaults end in catastrophic losses for investors with the company denying all responsibility for their dangerous lack of due diligence. They hide behind Terms and Conditions. Please read the other negative reviews here on Trust Pilot.

Operating as they do this company cannot survive.

Just updated this as the situation is actually getting worse !
Below are loans I have all were 6 MONTH LOANS , here are the days they have been active : 1300 , 1285 , 1233 , 1058 , 979 , 741.
This is totally unacceptable.
I have been investing with FS for some years now and for a while I gave them the benefit of the doubt but now they are getting to the realms of incredulity . They are so busy giving massive PR about how many millions of £'s worth of loans they have organised within a month which is marvellous , but they appear to have forgotten about the defaults and problematic loans which there are a myriad of. Some loans are hundreds if not even a 1000+ days past their settlement time. There seems to be no clear plan on how to deal with defaulted loans and instead of taking decisive action things just roll on - minus payments - the updates that are posted are totally laughable , they really need to be read to be believed - literally fictional drivel , the updates show what utter contempt and total disregard they show for the very people that make their company function - these guys don't deserve to be here . Fortunately I have systematically cut down my investment here .
Anyone thinking of Investing here please do you homework , look at the secondary market , look at the defaults , look at the mindless and factually incorrect rubbish that they call updates on these . If you are at ease with this then go ahead .

FUNDING SECURE - YOU NEED TO TAKE CONTROL OF THIS DEFAULT SITUATION IMMEDIATELY AND ALSO STOP POSTING FICTITIOUS UPDATES .

This company was the only one who would lend on my project (plot of land without planning permission) and Will Sterio was very helpful.

High rates but the majority of the loans are not repayed by the due date and intermittent updates appear with vague excuses and false promises which has made me suspicious. Much better platforms are available.

I would like to express my sincere opinion regarding FundingSecure.
I have invested my family fund to this plateform since slightly more than a year now. I am very pleased with the sheer number of bridging loans available and even more impressed that finding a low LTV (less than 60%) is not a problem at all. Even when a project is approaching its end and you need to re-invest into the same loan the LTV is often much lower than 70% (something between 62% to 68%).
Also, I had chat communication with them on more than one occasion, and the response time to be connected is fast and often got a sound explanation to my inquiry. For a more unuasual case, I had a call back from them to pragmatically solve my specific issue (It was regarding automatic re-investment on an existing loan that is going to mature, but I wanted the renewal to be done automatically within my IFISA account instead of the Main account: I could have done this manually when the capital and interests will be returned, but there was a risk that the loan in question would have been funded so quickly that I would miss out! For indeed, certain loans are funded in a blink of an eye).

I have only 2 suggestions to offer, which I believe will rate FundingSecure even much higher:
1. ) To make updates on the loans a bit more often, so that investors can appreciate the progress of the project going as planned and that the funds are drawdown accordingly to the work progress or something in that line. I was told by Stacy that SecureFunding is bringing new resources to work in that area.

2.) Investors will tremendously appreciate to have the options to not only select that all loans on the Main account be automatically swept in the IFISA account and re-invested, but to have a further option to select a SPECIFIC loan (that is inside the MAIN account) be automaticlly re-invested inside the IFISA account. I insist on SPECIFIC Loan , rather that set this feature as a standard default on all the loans found in the Main account, because investors will be able to maximise the rate of return when they want a particular loan that has an attracive bonus scheme (and/or cashback) to be switched over the IFISA account (that will shell any interests from taxation). Nevertheless, the feature of having all matured loans be swept automatically into the IFISA account and re-invested automatically, should be available as well. This standard automatic feature can be put ON and OFF at will, and at any case when the maximum IFISA limit is reached then the automatic swiping will not work of course (even though the radio button is still ON), but will work again when the funds inside the IFISA account has been reduced (for example from a manual widthdrawal) and thus the fund is below the IFISA limit. But I insist that investors can put the radio button on OFF while still able to SPECIFICALLY request a PARTICULAR loan to be swept AUTOMATICALLY to the IFISA account and automatically re-invested on the very same loan when the latter is renewed.

Voila.

They are absolutely terrible at updating the loans to the point of suspicion. They promise weekly updates on 6 month term loans. Here's my portfolio:
I have 14 loan investments, 9 are over the 6-month mark, 3 of which are in default state, 2 of which have not updated for over 2 months. You decide.

It's not an easy buck, by ANY measure.