Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Peer-to-Peer Investing Update Mid-2016

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It’s been a little while since I last wrote one of these updates.  January of 2015 to be exact.  Needless to say, there have been a few changes in my peer-to-peer investing in the last year and a half.  One of the biggest changes, I’ll talk about below.  First, let’s see where my peer-to-peer investing was when we last looked at it.  (You can read the full post here, or just read the recap below.)

Peer-to-Peer at EOY 2014 (Recap)

The biggest change in my Lending Club account at the end of 2014 was the NAR (which is an adjusted rate of return) had dropped from a little over 13% in 2013 down to 9.61% at the end of 2014.  Despite the drop, I felt like that was a pretty good rate of return, and reason enough to continue to invest in peer-to-peer lending.

Two other factors that I looked at were default loans and interest received.  In 2014, there were 4 loans that had gone into default. There had been only one in 2013, but with an increase in investing on my part, the rise was somewhat expected.  The total principle written off in 2014 was $41.87.  Total interest minus fees for 2014 was $115.69.  Take out the written off principle and you still get income on 2014 of $73.82.  Again, not a bad little bit of semi-passive income.

Peer-to-Peer in 2015 and the first half of 2016

So, it’s been a year and a half since I last shared one of these updates.  First, let me do a bit of a quick overview of where the account sits now, and then I’ll share some changes that have had some effect.

Peer-to-Peer income

Beating Broke Lending Club Update
Is Peer-to-Peer Investing Worth Your Time?

I like talking about the income (and resulting rate) first.  Why?  Because that’s the meaty money part of it. 🙂  And I like money.  At the end of 2014, my NAR was 9.61%. Here we are in August of 2016, and my NAR is currently showing at 9.89%.  It’s gone up!  I love when that happens!  There’s a couple of factors that likely have helped with that.  The first is that there haven’t been any defaults since 2014.  Right now, there are 3 loans that are threatening.  1 that’s in that nasty 31-120 days past due category.  Typically, if they get that far, they’re as good as defaulted.  We’ll see, but I fully expect that loan to go into default in the coming months.  The other 2 are split between the Grace Period and 16-30 day categories.  More often than not, those loans tend to come back to the current status.  Having them default could eat into the income for 2016, but that’s one of the risks we take in investing for higher returns.

Peer-to-Peer Income 2015

2015 was a bit of an odd year.  I didn’t pay nearly as much attention to the Lending Club account as I should have, and so, often when I would log in, I would have quite a bit of my portfolio sitting around doing nothing in the cash account.  At one point, I had about 40% of the entire account sitting in cash because I hadn’t done anything with it in a while. That doesn’t equate to good income.  For 2015, the interest minus fees only totaled up to $103.07.  Down from 2014, but purely reflective of my inactivity in reinvesting the cash.  The upside to 2015 was the lack of defaults.  Because there weren’t any defaults, the income minus written off loans was still 103.07.  That’s better than 2014, so even though my inactivity caused a reduction in gross income, it also may have sheltered me from defaults and thus preserved more of the income.

I’ve been a bit more active in 2016, and my income reflects it so far.  As of the end of July, interest received minus fees was at $72.04.  If that trend continues, 2016 will be slightly better than 2014.  One of my goals when beginning this account was to achieve $10 per month in income.  At this point, I’ve done that.  I just have to remain active in reinvesting the funds in order to maintain that level.  Next goal, $20 per month!

Peer-to-Peer Changes

One of the things that I wrote about in my “How I Invest” article was how I wasn’t eligible to directly invest or borrow because of the state that I lived in.  Probably the most significant change since the end of 2014 is that my state is now eligible for both.  I haven’t toyed with the borrowing side, but I have touched the direct investment side.  My experience there is mixed. One of the things I like about it is that you aren’t paying any fees or premiums on the investments that you’re buying.  That means you make more money over the life of the loan.  That’s good.  The downside, to me, is the delay in investment.

Direct Investing vs. Trading Platform

If you’re unfamiliar with how the direct side works, you basically go in and choose which loans to invest in.  You’ve got some ability to filter, but not all the same ones that you have on the FolioFN site.  Once you select some loans, you press the invest button.  Here’s where the delay comes in.  The loan only gets investing if it gets fully funded.  So, if you invest in a loan early in the process, you could be waiting a while before there’s enough investor commitment to fully fund the loan.  Once the loan is fully funded, it goes through a vesting process.  The folks at Lending Club look it over, make sure everything is what it is supposed to be, and then the loan finally gets funded.  And then you wait until the next pay date.  All told, you’re money could be sitting in a committed status for a week or more waiting on all of those steps.  Or, you could pay a small premium (you can filter based on the premium) on the FolioFN trading site and have your investment in your portfolio the next day.

After playing with the direct side, I can see myself using it occasionally, but really keep going back to the FolioFN trading site to do my investing.  My thought is that the sooner my money is working for me, the sooner I’m making money with it.

Institutional Investors

I don’t know that this really qualifies as a change, but it’s something that’s been a topic of conversation a lot over the last year. And that’s the idea that there are institutions who are investing in peer-to-peer investments. One of the biggest issues that many seem to have with this is that it’s meant to be peer-to-peer (it’s right in the name!) not institution-to-individual.  That’s how the traditional loan process works, not peer-to-peer!

Ok.  I get that, but I think there’s also an argument that as the peer-to-peer movement grows, there’s going to be an increasing scale of demand for the loans.  And if the individual investing side doesn’t grow as quickly, there will be a lot of loans that won’t get funded.  It’ll look bad for business, plus it will drive away potential borrowers.  I think as investors, we need to recognize that if borrowers are being driven away because of a low funding rate, it means less opportunity to invest.  What we need to hope for at this point, is that the institutional investors are held at bay, and used for filling those funding gaps rather than let run amok and run the individual investors off.

My Peer-to-Peer Investing Going Forward

Much like many of my other updates, which you can read on my Lending Club page which has links to those and other related articles, I just don’t see any good reason to stop or even scale back my investment in peer-to-peer investing. The return remains excellent, and defaults remain low. As I’ve mentioned in other updates, I believe some of that is just plain luck, and some of it is due to scale. I’m only working with a little over $1000 in the account, so it’s pretty easy to be a bit picky when selecting loans to invest in. If I were working with a lot more money in my account, I couldn’t be as picky, and would likely see my rate drop some and my defaults rise.

The whole idea of this experiment (it’s really gone beyond an experiment now) was to let the account organically grow. Invest a bit of seed and reinvest the principle payments and interest so that it’s all working to make more money.  In short, I’m letting the miracle of compounding interest work for me. And so far, it’s working quite well.

What are your experiences with Peer-to-Peer investing?  Is it working for you?  Do you have questions before you dip your toes in?  Let me know in the comments!

Lending Club Returns Update 4Q13

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Another quarter has come and gone, so it’s time for an update on the Lending Club returns I’ve been getting on my account.  At the end of the third quarter, my account was sitting at a return rate of 14.69%.  It’s actually improved a bit since then, but Lending Club has also added the ability to adjust the displayed NAR, which does some funny stuff (see below) and reduces the rate a bit.  I think that’s a good thing (again, see below) and that’s the rate I’ll likely be using for future updates.

Lending Club Adjusted NAR

A few months back, Lending Club introduced what they’re calling an adjusted NAR.  Basically, it uses the historical charge off rates of loans at the different stages of delinquency.  Obviously, the current loans have a historical rate of charge off of 0%.  Once they go into the Grace Period, about 23%, 16-30 days late, about 49%, 31-120 days late, about 72%, and in full default, about 86%.Beating Broke Lending Club Update

As an example, my portfolio currently has two notes that are in the 31-120 days late category.  So, when Lending Club is adjusting my NAR, they use the 72% figure and assume that 72% of the principle will be lost.  Using that number, they then calculate the new, adjusted NAR.  With the two notes late, my adjusted NAR is currently showing as 13.16%.  Still a very healthy number, and likely a more realistic number.  I like the new adjustment, as it should give investors a more realistic number to look at.

Lending Club Defaults and Late Notes

As I mentioned above, my portfolio currently has two notes that are 31-120 days delinquent.  And, if you go by the historical numbers, those two notes have about a 72% chance of eventually going into collections.  I’ve been lucky enough to only have had one note actually go that far to date, and the collection agency was able to get a bit of that money back for me.  It wasn’t the entire amount owed, but a significant portion of the principle, which I was happy for.  I could try and sell off the two delinquent notes, but at this point, I wouldn’t get much out of them, so I think I’ll just ride them out and see what happens.  The total principle involved is only about $35, so it would mean about a month and a half of lost interest payments.  That’s a risk I’m willing to take.

The Future of My Portfolio

With the rates I’m getting, I don’t foresee stopping my investing through Lending Club.  I may even start putting some more money into the account sometime in the future.  At the moment, I’m content to just leave it and reinvest the payments each month.  I’ve seen a few other investors that have either significantly changed how they’re using Lending Club, or have begun backing out of it altogether.  I think it’s something that you need to be able to change how you do it, but I also believe that backing out altogether is a mistake at this point.  The technology is still relatively new, and many of the changes that we’re seeing Lending Club make have been for the better.

I’ve created a page that consolidates all of the posts I’ve done on Lending Club, as well as the quarterly updates since I began doing them.  If you’re interested in starting to invest in Lending Club, you can read more on my Lending Club page, or you can sign up for an account and give it a go.

Lending Club Return Update 2Q13

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Lending Club is a peer-to-peer lending service.  People (like you and me) sign up for their site, and list a loan to be funded by investors (like you and me).  I like to think of it as replacing the bank in a loan with me.  (Except I’m not “too big to fail”.)  Of course, with that comes the same risks that the bank assumes when it issues a loan.  There’s a risk of late payments, missed payments, and default and it’s associated collection activities.  Luckily, Lending Club and Prosper (another p2p lending site) take care of most of the paperwork for the lenders (and borrowers).  This post is the second quarter update on my Lending Club account, and the return I’m getting on my money.

If you’d like to catch up a little, here’s links to the last few quarterly updates. (1Q13, 4Q12, 3Q12)

Beating Broke Lending Club Update

First Lending Club Default

I’ve been mentioning in the last several updates how lucky I’ve been that I haven’t had a loan go into default yet.  Well, that streak ended recently.  I knew it was only a matter of time before one of the notes defaulted, and one has.  Luckily, the loan that defaulted was a small one, and my portfolio has grown enough that the value of the default didn’t really affect the account too much.  The value of the defaulted loan is about 1% of my Lending Club portfolio.

There’s also a loan that is in the 31-120 days late category, that has the possibility of going to default, but at this point, the borrower is making attempts to pay the loan.  The reason it’s still in the late category at all is because the most recent payment was only a partial payment.  This loan is a larger loan than the defaulted one, so I may have to consider taking the loss on it and selling it at a discount to get it off my books.

Diligent Reinvestment

One of the things that I like most about Lending Club, and p2p lending as a whole, is that you get a relatively high churn on your money.  It’s not a buy-and-hold scenario, per se.  Yes, you invest in a note with the expectation of holding that note until it is fully paid off, but, as the payments come in monthly, that money is available for reinvestment.  In my 1Q13 update, I mentioned that I’d been a bit lazy in my reinvestment of those funds.  I was slightly better with that in the second quarter, and was able to keep most of the money pretty actively invested.

[Tweet “I knew it was only a matter of time before one of the notes defaulted, and one has.”]

Passive Income from Lending Club

Many people (myself included) call p2p investing a form of passive income.  While not strictly meeting the criteria in that it does still require some activity on the investors part, it’s pretty close.  Maybe we need to start defining passive income in terms of it’s passivity?  Something like levels.  Each level is achieved by it’s decile of passivity.  For instance, I think p2p investing could be somewhere around 90-95% passive.  That would make it a Level 9 Passive Income source.  With about 15 minutes of work a month, I’ve earned almost $60 in interest payments as of the end of June of 2013.  Last year, with the same amount of work, I earned $75.37 in interest payments.  If I had significantly more money, that amount would be larger, but I think that the time spent each month to earn it would be a bit larger as well.  Still, a pretty close to passive means of making some money.

Lending Club Return Update

We’ve talked about most of the rest of the account, but the title did say that it was a return update, right?  Yes.  In my 1Q13 update, I mentioned that the rate of return then was being shown as 14.63%.  As of 8/3/13, it’s being displayed as 14.08%.  The combination of the defaulted loan, and the payoff of a couple of higher interest paying notes is bringing the rate down.  I’ve been happy with the return I’ve been getting, but I truly think that a more reasonable expectation of return is somewhere in the 10-13% range.  I’ll take the 14%+ returns I’ve been getting though.

Click here to learn more about how I select my Lending Club investments.

Overall, I’ve been really happy with my results at Lending Club.  And, with the p2p lending industry as a whole issuing over 200 Million in loans in July, it would appear that there are plenty of other happy users too.

Have you gotten your feet wet in p2p lending?  Why or why not?