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In this month's newsletter, we preview a new product, win an award, speak to a lender who's been busy blogging about Zopa, and report on recent borrower repayment performance. |
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Despite tales of woe in the traditional banking industry, we are pleased to report another strong quarter of borrower repayments with all time bad debt at 0.09% against our predicted average bad debt rate of 1.3%. For full details click here. Thank you all for proving, once again, that people are basically good. |
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Zopa Listings is coming soon. We are putting the final touches on a new way to borrow and lend. Borrowers will be able to set their own rates and lenders will be able to make offers to individuals. Everybody gets more control. And Zopa will make sure everything is easy, transparent and safe. More information on Zopa Listings can be found here. And of course, we will have more details on Zopa Listings in next month’s newsletter. |
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Against stiff competition from the likes of Credit Suisse, Zopa won CNET’s financial services technology project of the year award this week (full details available on our blog). We have also been short listed as finalists in this year’s IFS Financial Innovation Awards |
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September 21st used to be notable for being the birthday of the drummer from Motorhead, as well as the date Belize gained independence from the UK. But the charity Peace One Day is trying to make it memorable for something else entirely, by establishing it as an annual day of global ceasefire and non-violence. How did you hear about Zopa? Working Lunch Programme on BBC2. What return are you getting on your funds at the moment? Not really sure overall, I started with an open offer and a few went to lower AER loans. But since then I have ramped up the interest rate and dropped the A and B ranges. I now only make offers over 9.8%. I like being at the riskier end of the market. How do you classify your Zopa investment? - would you treat it as an alternative to another form, or is it in its own category? Its my only proper long term investment right now, I was in various schemes but they all seemed to end up earning me less than if I had re-invested back in my business. My old Endowment policy only broke even. I did look at pensions but so many people get less than expected and if I was to die a year after I retired I couldn't pass it on to my family. Also the annual return is pretty poor for the annuities I could find. The only positive side to pensions in my view is the top up you get from the tax man but that doesn't offset the downsides. I have also just got back into shares but only as a bit of fun. I have just taken a punt of £400 on Northern Rock as it went below £2.00. I don't hold better than 50/50 chances of it making me money but I thought it was worth a go. It's more of a bet than an investment. The dividend is due next week at 14.2p per £1.92 share it's giving me a 7.4% return. If the shares go back up it would be nice. How did you find the whole process? Very simple, I made a few mistakes but none of them cost me money so they were a good learning experience. Mainly the problems were me misunderstanding the system not problems with the system itself. >What made you decide to write a blog about your experiences? I am a member of a forum and I made a post letting people know about Zopa. I was accused of trying to profit from it even though I hadn't put the affiliate link on. I explained their misunderstanding and apologised. I then had more people PM'ing me asking for more details. I decided to put it up on a website rather than continuously Pm'ing people back. Are you a regular blogger, or poster on online social communities? No, I don't have time what with my business and life in general. The site is mainly to keep my tech notes together and I thought at the time I would covert it to wiki format to make it easier to edit. I will keep adding bits and bobs as I go along but its not a major effort on my part. What’s the best feature of Zopa for you? The higher return with low relative risk. Its nice and easy to use. ...and the worst? I would like to see a lenders market so I can take over loans from other lenders. It would allow me to get more money into it quicker. Would you consider being a Zopa borrower if the need arose? It would certainly be high on my list. I see you play the guitar, do you play in a band or is it a leisurely hobby? I don't really play as much as mess around. I love music and go through instruments quicker than birthdays. The guitars do seem to stay with me though. Who’s your guitar legend? Thats a hard one, Brian May, Mark Knopfler, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Slash and more. It depends what mood I am in at the time. There are so many fantastic guitarists around. Finally - if people want to read your blog, where can they find it? Its at ezee.co.uk not sure if it will be of much interest though. |
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Zopa Limited. |