Monday 6 May 2019

First User Experiences of Our Money Market



Having selected Our Money Market for our fourth peer to peer lending investment platform, I will go through my first user experiences from the sign up process to navigating the platform to make my first investments.

The sign up process was very straight forward with the online application form indicating it takes about five minutes and an additional two minutes to fill out the identity verification checks. Overall the process didn’t feel like it took that long with the entry of all the usual details of your name, email, date of birth, address, etc.  You then move onto the ID verification checks.  What stood out to me during this process was it was the first platform to require two forms of ID (eg your driver’s licence and Medicare card or passport).  Needless to say it was a seamless process and we were signed up in minutes and ready to transfer funds in.

Transferring money into your account was particularly easy due to Our Money Market having its own unique Bpay details.  Transfer some money in (minimum of $50) and you are ready to start lending.
This platform allows you to view all details of available loans once you have verified your account.  The details provided on each loan include a sections on;

  • Loan details (all the typical items such as loan amount, rate, term, repayment frequency, loan purpose and loan grade), 
  • Non identifying personal information (gender, age range, occupation, residential status and city)
  • Credit history (credit score, number of consumer enquiries, defaults, etc)
  • Financial information (Monthly expenses, employment details, income and existing credit obligations).

The provided information gives you the necessary details to make an informed decision on whether you wish to invest in the available loan or not.  The platform provides three ways to invest your money: Quick Invest, Invest and Auto Invest.

Quick Invest is a simple way to build a portfolio of the available loans based on a risk profile you choose.  While I think this is a great feature, when there are only one or two loans on offer (which is all I’ve seen at the moment) the feature seems a little redundant at this point in time.

Invest is where you can review each individual loan and select the loans you want to invest in.  This is my preferred method as I like to be actively involved in the selection of the loans I invest in.

Auto Invest is a function to set up the auto investment of funds.  It has the ability to set a maximum percentage exposure to any one loan and a maximum exposure to each loan grade.  This gives you the ability to set up your maximum preferred exposures to each loan grade.

The grades of loans cover A+, A, B, C and D with each loan grade divided further into five sub-levels.  Our Money Market ranks each loan with one of these categories.  A+ is considered the best ranked loan with the lowest risk of lender default and returns on these loans are lower. D rated loans, on the other hand, have a higher risk of default and corresponding higher interest rate to compensate for the risk.  Knowing that we are investing in individual loans and thus exposed to the risk of default, diversification is the best course of action to minimise potential losses.  This means investing smaller amounts in more loans to reduce the risk.  This risk can be reduced further by having a combination of different grade loans.

The process of investing in a loan seems fairly straight forward where you add the amount you want to invest and click through to invest.  It brings you to a page showing the projected returns and you confirm you are committing the funds to the loan.  One thing I found odd was that a number of loans I’d committed funds to, disappeared prior to the funding closing period and the money was returned with no details why.  I’m assuming this occurred because the borrower changed their mind and withdrew their application, but never the less it is something to keep an eye on when you are working to invest your funds.

The general account overview looks good allowing you so see a good account summary showing Net Annualised return, total interest received, invested funds, committed funds (assigned to a loan not yet issued) and funds available to invest.  Scrolling down you can get more details on your portfolio.

Reporting is key to understanding how your investment is preforming.  One thing I found while going through the available reports on this platform, was that statements appeared to only include the total loan repayments (not split out into principle and interest) which means I couldn’t find a report that shows how much interest I’ve earnt during the month.  Unless I’ve missed something, to me this is a shortcoming of on the available reporting but will keep you posted if I find out its user error on my part…

Overall I like the platform which seems relatively straight forward to use.  I like the visibility of the loans you are investing in which gives you better understanding of the potential risks you are getting involved with.  If other people have experience with investing on Our Money Market, interested to hear your feedback and experiences on the site.

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