BondMason Reviews 54

Reply from BondMason

May 21, 2019

Dear Gregory,

I can only see one account with your name - your account is closed and you have withdrawn £89 more than you deposited, which is your net return.

You have not lost any funds in that account.

Please let me know if there is a different account, or another name you have invested under.

Updated follow client clarification of account affected:
We have 3 different accounts in the name of Mrs Andrews. All 3 have made a positive return to date.

The most troublesome account, which I assume is your wife's account, does have exposure to a platform which has gone into administration. We are only able to provide public updates in line with a non-disclosure agreement we have signed, as part of our role on the Committee to work out the remaining loan book. Sadly we can't share more information than what we have.

Even if all of these loans have a 100% write off, which is not our current expectation, your wife's account will still have made a positive return.

We are disappointed that this process is taking so long, but we must respect the role and actions of the administrator, who is working on behalf of many stakeholders.

Across our platform the total exposure to the platform in administration is approximately 2%. Unfortunately, because of the timing of your investment and the random and fair allocation of live opportunities, you wife has more exposure to this than the average.

We will continue to work hard to recover these funds, as we will do in any loan which may go bad. To date, we have been able to recover over 99% of loans which we classify as on Watchlist or in Recovery. Please see https://www.bondmason.com/blog/life-loan-watchlist-recovery-and-defaults for further details.

Regardless of the analysis above, I am sorry that the experience you received wasn't what you had hoped for. This is a challenge when investing and placing capital at risk to achieve a return - we can't be certain about the outcome at the outset.

Although it is likely to be little consolation, I do hope that you have received a good experience in terms of how we focus on our clients best interests: seeking to be responsive and diligent. We remain available should you wish to discuss your account at any time.

Many thanks,

Steve

Reply from BondMason

Oct 10, 2017

Norbert - thank you for trying BondMason and spending time to write this review.

Loan allocation speeds can vary, and take an average of 4 weeks from deposit to full deployment. However, there are times when deployment can take longer: summer for example; or shorter: October / November.

We are working hard to reduce loan allocation times, and also ensure that every client has a similar experience.

That being said, we will always prioritise loan quality over loan allocations. We would rather it takes longer for funds to be deployed than lower our loan approval thresholds.

Hopefully this can be seen in the quality of the returns since we launched in 2015: please see our statistics page for more details www.bondmason.com/statistics

We hope you experience the same attractive returns during your time with BondMason.

Reply from BondMason

Jul 1, 2017

Stephen -

Thank you for taking the time to write a review.

On your points:

Cash drag is a feature of the model. It takes an average of 4 weeks to be fully invested. I can see on your account that you deposited funds on November 25th and were fully allocated on December 28th, almost exactly one month. So your experience is in line with expectations here. Although we continue to work hard for clients to be allocated faster.

In terms of losses: the total amount of defaults is running at 0.46%. With losses closer to 0.1%. Although it is a feature of the service that you will have either up to 1% or up to 2% of your funds in each position, so any losses aren't spread evenly amongst all clients. In your case you had a 2% investment setting and have 1 loan which is in default. There is still a process of recovery against this, so it is not yet a crystallised loss, and your final outcome isn't yet known. Obviously it is disappointing that you had a defaulted loan in your holdings - we don't like defaults, but they will happen from time to time.

Returns: We suggest that it is best consider for a minimum 12 month hold period. This enables the account performance to tend towards the average return of 8.0%. Although, we do aim to enable clients to liquidate when they want if they want to exit before then. In your case you requested to fully liquidate your account on January 11th, which was fully processed by January 13th. So you had your account with us for approximately 7 weeks in total, and you were fully invested for approximately 2 weeks.

Sadly, our model simply doesn't work well for these very short hold periods - we are not an instant access bank account with an 8% target return. That's simply not possible. In light of your review we will re-review our messaging to ensure that clients don't see it as an instant access service delivering 8.0% - which could create a negative experience against those unrealistic expectations.

Every client that has had an account for a minimum of 12 months has had a positive return, with the average gross returns being a little over 8% p.a.

Many thanks,

Steve

Reply from BondMason

Apr 17, 2017

@maz - thank you for posting your review.

We recently changed the fee structure for the first time since setting up over 2 years ago. We have no intention of changing these again.

We have given existing clients additional time (above and beyond the notification period as set out by the T&Cs) to consider if they want to continue with BondMason or liquidate their positions. The vast majority have decided to continue with us.