First user experiences of MoneySpot

While it has been a while since I’ve updated everyone where I’m at, my peer to peer lending journey has been continuing.  It is here I want to talk about my first user experiences in signing up for my second Peer to Peer Lending investment platform, MoneySpot.  MoneySpot offer small consumer loans of short duration (up to 3 months) and according to the November 2018 performance report the average loan size was $861, 67 days in duration and has a 12 month rolling bad debt rate of 3.822%.  Given the nature of the loans, Moneyspot works by drawing on a pool of money (supplied by people like you and me) and they handle all day to day operations.  The outcome is MoneySpot provide a distribution of the earnings to the investors based on the overall fund performance.

The application process was fairly straight forward, although I found the sequence of information requested a little weird and the user interface not as user friendly as other registered website platforms.  After verifying your email, you selected the type of account you were opening (individual, company, trust, etc) and then you are required to enter the details of the investment.  There were a few things I found odd about this step, primarily that it came before you’re asked to enter your name and address.  The second thing that stood out for me is that the online application form has the bank details for the funds transfer.  In this case you are required to provide details of the amount transferred, date funds transferred and reference comment (surname, trust, name, etc) so MoneySpot can identify your deposit into their trust account.  This indicates to me that you are depositing your funding into a general bank account and not a specific trust set up for you as part of the sign up process.  You also answer a few questions about where the money comes from that you’re about to invest and what your goals are.

The next step after you’ve put in you transfer details is to enter your personal details and a few additional questions around if you are politically exposed.  The rest is all straight forward after this with things like your tax file number, bank account details.

Although it was an online form I somehow managed to submit the form while missing one of the checkbox questions about what to do with the distributions (payout to my bank account or reinvest into the fund).  MoneySpot emailed me the application form of which I had to print, mark my preference, scan and send back.  About a week after I signed up and transferred the money I received a letter in the mail with the details of my fund allocation.

While you apply online to be a part of the fund it does not automatically set you up with an online portal for you to view your investments.  After I had applied I found I still had to create an account to view my investment.  The online investment portal is not run by MoneySpot but by One Registry Services and it appears anyone can create an account without an Investment to link to it…  All you need is to enter you name, email, phone number and set up a password.

Once you have registered your One Registry Services account you need to link your MoneySpot investment to the account.   To do this, all you need to do is to click add investment on the home page once logged in and enter the details sent to you by MoneySpot and click add.  The reporting available on the website appears minimal to giving you the basics of transactions and distributions. 

Overall while I did not find the signup process difficult, I would say that the process could be better refined to make the user experience less cumbersome.  But given now I just sit back and let the distributions roll in, let us hope the process was worth the effort.  Interested to hear other people’s thoughts and experiences in using MoneySpot.