Lets hope hackers have nothing to do with it.
Very poor for an internet based company.
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Payment protect was mentioned late last year with the expectation that it would be launched for retail investors in the early new year but we don't seem to have heard anything about it lately. I presume this may mean they are having problems with it. https://www.harmoney.co.nz/payment-protect/coming-soon
I don't think they mention what happens on the investor side when a borrower makes a Payment Protect claim.
i.e. when a payment is waived due to redundancy are the payments written off or covered by insurance? Hope they have good fraud and document checks when a borrower makes a claim.
Loan 62648, monthly borrower income 307k, loan amount 2875, grade D. This is wrong in so many ways. I think I can state categorically state that the borrower doesn't have that income, so how did it get into the system? Borrower entered it and Harmoney has "confirmed" it some how? Harmoney have entered the real income incorrectly and the system doesn't have any sanity checks? I'm also guessing that Harmoney do their loan grading external to the website, as I can't imagine any way that this borrower would get a grade of D if they really wanted to borrow money. The loan is 95% filled, I think those people will have a legitimate reason to complain if this loan fails and it written off.
Yeah seen a few incomes that do smack, as mistakes...
Hey nice to see the figures of amt applied for, along with term showing again on reports...
I think such mistakes are completely unacceptable on this kind of website.
Harmoney need to get borrower details right, as they are used to determine credit eligibility and presented to investors who will be lending thousands of $ to them.
Hi guys. I've been tinkering over the last week with a website that helps show your Harmoney loan information in a unique way.
It's a simple matter of Exporting your loan information from Harmoney (Dashboard -> Reports -> Export) and uploading the loans.csv file provided by Harmoney.
Note: There is no lender information in the exported loan report. It does contain the loan Id, but these are readily accessible by any member of the site.
The graph shows your loans along a LoanId timeline, with the Y axis representing Outstanding Principal. You can show all, or filter by Status; Current, Charged Off, Arrears, Paid Off and Cancelled.
The site is reasonably functional now so you're welcome to use it at the following url; http://precis.azurewebsites.net/
Attachment 8003
(I have a neat new feature that I'll be working on over the weekend.)
Useful graph, at least to me. I'll have to do a similar graph for my harmoney investment tracker. I noticed it doesn't seem to work in Firefox, fine in IE/Edge and Chrome though.
Looks like not many ppl wanting loan recently at harmoney
I'd noticed since that big fraud mishap ... Harmoneys loan listings had seemed to slow down quite considerably. My thoughts were maybe not quite as many were making the cut!
there was over 15+ loans on thursday, but they got snapped up quite fast
It's pretty quiet for a Saturday. I usually find that the weekends are quite busy with people buying cars etc. Have been on three times today and......nothing. maybe a question for Harmoney to answer. Is this just a coincidence or are Harmoney being a bit more selective since the fraud case as suggested by Darchie (which cost me 100-bucks by the way).
Great site PennyPicker. Thanks for making that available to us all. It's really good at showing trends which will influence how I invest going forward.Quote:
PrecisHi guys. I've been tinkering over the last week with a website that helps show your Harmoney loan information in a unique way.
First thing this morning there were 2, at around 1pm there was about 11 (I think, didn't actually count them all), now there are 0.
It does appear that there are less loans on offer, but they are coming through, you just have to check often enough.
I didn't lose anything in the ones that were listed in the recent fraud, but I did have 2 notes in one that never made a payment around the same time which have now been written off. I have to wonder if Harmoney has become a target for ID fraud criminals?
I get crap happens, written off loans is part of doing business with such a high return, the problem I have is that there is little (read no) communication to investors about a loan that is written off, eg Why was it written off? etc
The shortage of loans is getting me concerned - the product does not really seem to be taking off with borrowers.
Harmoney will also be concerned and be considering dropping their credit criteria to let more lower ranked borrowers in.
This is the problem with this whole model - it's not Harmoneys money at stake.
Fortunately I have only had 2 loans default both of which I had only contributed $25 each thank goodness. But one of the loans was for $25675 which means a lot of investors got stung. It was a 'D2' category loan but I would have though they would not have lent such a large amount to a D2 category borrower. I have another one which is a A1 category loan where I have contributed $500. The borrower appears to have only paid 2 installments since September so waiting to take a big hit on this one.
" BORROWER DETAILS
BORROWER COMMENTS
Purchase a 2003 Mazda MX8 - can offer this as security onto this loan. I already have my van as security on this loan."
I thought all harmoney loans were unsecured - if so this tends to say that harmoney is not doing even the most basic of fact checking on comments. Not even checking for outright lies that impact fundementally on how good/safe the loan is
sometimes, putting more than $100 into a single loan is asking to be burned. If it defaults, thats a months earnings right there.. i've always tried to keep myself put just 25$. It may take months or years but just gotta stick to that habit.
I always try to resist the temptation.. Cant really expect Harmoney to be 100% default-free.. Even your brick-and-mortar banks get defaults.. I love the service Harmoney offers, otherwise my money will be sitting in Trust funds.. Its another good addition to a portfolio
And quite an interesting concept from a banking standpoint
Yeah, I would have thought the communication to investors, particularly on the fraudulent loans, but arguably on any that get written off would be nice. Even if once a month or something. Letting us know a bit about the steps that have been taken, and/or why it was written off.
Even the recent frauds, people have been arrested, so they must be in NZ. I wondered why they were written off so quickly. But nothing from Harmoney. Not a proactive company.
I've had 39 "charged off", but more than happy with my overall return. A third of those charged off never made a single payment. I assume they never had any intention to do so. The only thing that bothers me is the lack of communication from Harmoney regarding what is happening with those 39 clients. Are we to believe Harmoney have not been able to squeeze a single cent out of 39 clients who stopped paying?
As long as the Harmoney charge-off rates are within their forecast, perhaps Harmoney would not be particularly motivated to put in extra effort to chase payments. If the delinquency rate became worse and started to deter investors from investing, I imagine there would be more motivation for Harmoney to pursue the charged-off borrowers.
Hi guys, just a quick update on Precis; I've fixed the issue that might have been preventing Firefox users from uploading their loan statement.
If your loans generate a difficult to read cluster of nodes you can zoom into this region by left clicking and dragging a region over the nodes in question. Click the upper right button "Reset Zoom" to return to normal.
Also, you can deselect particular loans by clicking on the legend to the right, i.e. if you only want to see loans in arrears de select the other status types.
Attachment 8019
Yet another income that smacks of error! Loan # 6326 ... 13,000 after tax per month ... somehow doubt it... it's an entry that SHOULD BE CORRECT!
Also agreed, yesterday saw a rewrite loan with $900 monthly repayments with $1600 monthly income.
Another D1 loan this morning with 14k income per month borrowing 25k for a tax bill.
Darchie, please email me on monica.mathis@harmoney.co.nz so we can look into this. I cannot give out any information or check on an individual account on this thread. We cannot find number 6326 - please check number and email me. Cheers Monica
Loan (and my money) has been stuck in funding with 7 notes remaining for the whole weekend now...
I invested in it to move it along, but nothing happened, still stuck at seven notes. Wonder if Harmoney has frozen it because it's a dodgy borrower?
Seems like the funds have been removed from "in funding" and returned to my account. The loan has been fully funded though.
Must have been a case where I put an order in for that loan when it had already been fully funded, but the system got stuck on 7 notes left and hadn't been updated to reflect it's fully funded status.
Sometimes I question how robust Harmoney is with their credit checking process e.g. loan LAI*00063321 where someone aged 20-29 is getting supposedly getting $2,639.00 per month after tax in superannuation. Doesn't sound right. Anyone know how Harmoney does their credit checking?
I was gong to mention exactly the same. Not credit checking just a lack of cross checking on the data. I'm assuming the Govt Super is wrong, but not going to invest in it. Makes me wonder about the 44% that have invested.
I was also going to query loan 63299, Grade A2, but they're renting. I don't think I've ever seen an A or a B that is renting. But it is a rewrite after 3 months so maybe they go up in Harmoney's ranknings if they've been a successful borrower.
Always one eye watching P2P overseas - It's not NZ and maybe not regulated the same..... worth a read
ihttp://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-0...rnal-loan-revi
Renting in CHCH is probably quite common. And a married, double-income couple who've stayed for a while in the same place sounds like a safe investment.
This is the thing that worries me about Harmoney's fast and easy approach to giving out loans:
"Borrowers may understate their expenses or liabilities, or overstate their income. In such cases, they may be unable to afford to repay a loan and default on their obligations. It may also mean that Harmoney assigns a risk grade which does not accurately reflect the borrower’s risk."
I get it that Harmoney is attractive to borrowers because it's easy to get a loan, but it seems too relaxed if people can just type in any numbers to "overstate" incomes.
have any of the harmoney fraud cases made the media or court notices yet? If so could some one post links. Ive only seen one article which mostly just referenced this thread.
Have any of the accused appeared before court yet? and were they convicted?
People might be interested in this very recent thread - a property investor in need of a quick $20k who applied to both Harmoney and Squirrel.
http://www.propertytalk.com/forum/sh...-two-platforms
I believe they look at bank transactions over a 3 month period (incomings and outgoings). This is usually done on an automated basis. I believe most of the issues that we are seeing are due to this unrefined automatic process. The addition if some simple logic would help.this would catch unrealistic incomes and also 20-29 year olds listed as having their income as govt superannuation.
I've been with Harmoney for 9 months now... I know others have already been with them for over 1 year.
I've now witnessed a few 'Write Offs' as well as bad payment history loans too.
Question 1: Do I feel like a 'Valued Investor Client'? - Answer 1: NO
Question 2: Why not? - Answer 2: Lack of personal ( 1 on 1 ) Contact \ Communications regarding when Harmoney Loans go bad.
Question 3: What am I doing about it? - Answer 3: I have not invested fresh money in over 3 months. Also I have not reinvested my existing money ( = Interest & Principle payments ) for over 3 months now. Every cent I can get I am removing from Harmoney.
Question 4: So where is your Fresh money going now? - Answer 4: Over to Lending Crowd.
I would be interested to know what other Investor strategy's are at this time with Harmoney???
What's your experience with arrears?
I exported Harmoney's latest spreadsheet and sorted loans by date of investment vs. interest paid. My dashboard says I've got $0.00 in arrears. But the spreadsheet data shows only 27% have paid by the first due date, even though I allowed for four days grace to clear transactions. The sheet says the next payment (i.e. the first payment) is now due two months from when the loan was issued.
A clear 73% have made no payments. This is from my first batch of 22 loans, ranging from grades A1 to F3. I've since invested $13k over the last month.
Harmoney's bookkeeping doesn't seem to be that flash. Do they sort themselves out over time, or have you not kept track of actual vs. reported arrears?
Hi Stevo, If you email me directly with the details we will take a look at it for you. dan@harmoney.co.nz
You do realise that this is an online, low service, low margin business. You are investing $25 in a loan and you want a call whenever something happens? Sure you may have invested in 1000 loans and therefore $25k but I think people are getting to bogged down in the individual loans and not in the big picture.
Rather than complaining about lack of personal service (how much would that cost!), you should be complaining about discrepancies in info (which people on this forum are) and the lack of automation. My question:
Q1 - why cant I set criteria (ie. B-E 36m) and have money auto invested whenever i have more than $25 in my account. I have to log in multiple times a day just to ensure my money is working hard. I should be able to choose any of my filters as an auto invest.
Hi Harvey,
You do realize the 'issues' you may have with Harmoney are more than likely going to be different than my 'issues' with Harmoney - We are people and all different!
I also include 'personal contact' as a direct Email to me!
Harmoney know who EVERY Investor in every Note is ( after all they pay us when there is money, every month!
So an Email to every Investor when a loan is XX month over due and for sure an Email for every Default should be easy work for Harmoney to organize.
They have a team of people chasing the Dud loan notes - It's not so hard for someone in that team at Harmoney to send a Group Email to all the Investors - It's just common decency and respect for your Customers.
WHat!!! just got an email about the new fee structure for investors starting 13 June.
Instead of a 1.25% fee on interest, a fee will be charged on interest earned. 20% for investors under 10k, 17.5% for investing 10-50k, 15% for investing over 50k
Bloody expensive, the existing fee structure is equivalent to only 5.3% of my interest earned.
https://www.harmoney.co.nz/how-it-wo...aign=feechange
New charging structure released. I haven't made sense of it yet. Not sure if that's cos I'm tired or the explanation is a bit confusing.
Seems like their comparison is between old charges (pre Dec) and new charges, but current charges are not in the comparison. Strange.
One way of putting the change is that our fees are trebling from what they are at the moment, at least I think that's what it implies.
It's gonna hit the low grade loans really hard. Quick calculation suggests that investing $25 in a loan over 3 years with ~30% interest you will get ~$0.47 deducted under the current structure, under the new structure @20% you'll get ~$2.6 deducted in fees!!! Over 5x increase!!!
Lending Crowd, please increase your loan offerings so I can move over there with a much more reasonable 10% fee.
Yes I just read the new lending fee structure - Not Happy.
scenario: $10K worth of loan @ 13% for 36 months.
Old fee structure would be: 10K principle + 3yrs of $1,300 = $13,900 @ 1.25% + total fee of $173.75!
New fee structure: 17.5% of $1,300 over 3 years = total fee of $682.50 !!!!
Now who are the winners here?
Investors have got their wishes - From June 16 > No more Service Fees on Capital Repayments or on an Early Repaid Loan no 'Lump Sum' Service Fee on the Interest PLUS the Capital.
The Increases are also likely to do with Trade Me buying in! You only have to look at the Increases in Sales Fees over at Trade ME to see their influence here now!!
Bye Harmoney. Those fees are insane and unfair to smaller investors.
Maybe this is the result of some posters berating rewrites and being charged fees on the capital aspect of repayments? It sounds like Harmoney are planning to treble their fees for the average investor. Could Harmoney confirm this? If harmoney had started out with this fee structure, could thy tell us what how much more in investor fees they would have received?
Your math maybe wrong.
10k at 13% is $12130 in 36 months your out by $1770
Fee increase - Holy S..T
For simplicity sake all figures are based on a $100 Loan, No allowance made for late payments or writeoffs
F5 for 5 Years @ 39.99% Fee Was $2.91 Now $26.49
E5 for 5 Years @ 38.25% Fee Was $2.82 Now $25.12
D5 For 5 Years @ 30.24% Fee Was $2.44 Now $19.00
C5 For 5 Years @ 23.23% Fee Was $2.12 Now $13.99
B5 For 5 Years @ 16.48% Fee Was $1.84 Now $9.49
A5 For 5 Years @ 13.25% Fee Was $1.72 Now $7.46
A1 For 5 Years @ 9.99% Fee Was $1.59 Now $5.49
I just hope Harmoney stay in business until I get my last lot of money out. I think they are dead in the water.
Their example was comparing an apple and an orange. Just upped the interest rate to until the advantage looks to be in the favour of the lender.
I could almost accept the new fee if it included repayment insurance.
What really gets me is not only have they tripled their effective fee (ignoring rewrites for the moment), but the "theoretical example" that they give is just an insult to the intelligence. See - 17.50% of bananas is about the same as 1.25% of apples. The only correct comparison is based on an investment made at current rates, not comparing with historic rates.
The cynic in me is now seeing that the rewrite double dipping was ALWAYS part of their business model. Now having seen how the investors reacted to it, they embarked on a medium term plan to make their returns more "honest" by changing the lender fees, but to do it in such a way that it doesn't appear too bad. Hence the increased rates in December for this theoretical example garbage.
Ok, I'll take my tin-foil hat off now but I'd love to hear some real justifications for the massive increases in fees. If they really want to grow the business I'd suggest a quick rethink before they alienate most of their current investors.
at least this wont take effect until mid-june. i guess investors got their wish, too much whinging on the re-writes.
I have yet to see how this new fee structure will work out.. if the returns are still around 12% I'd be happy as larry to stay with harmoney. If it goes below 8%.. i might as well put my money in a Trust Fund
Xcell spreadsheet maybe wrong, I still see great returns im sorry, 14% instead of 16% on an individual f5 loan with all those pesky rewrites gone. (and calculated at 15% ie greater than 50k invested.
10% of interest(like lending crowd) would be far more reasonable - 20% is just taking the piss.
If my returns get even any where close to where you are talking Ill be moving my investing to Squirrel Money and Lending Crowd, For me harmoney formed the high risk, high return part for my P2P portfolio. C-F Grade. These grades are by far the worst hit by the fee increase of over 900% in some cases.
By the looks of it once the new fees are active harmoney will move to the same place in my portfolio as lendme - ie Just does not stack up or make sense against other P2P offerings
Made it to interest.co.nz http://www.interest.co.nz/business/8...wers-fees-amid
Hamoney's not exactly a place to make rash decisions about pulling out or for making fast money. It'll be interesting to see how this evolves.
true true... i wouldnt mind such high fees if we somehow have the option as retail investors to recoup some or all of the delinquencies through the fee structure
but i will still wait how this new structure turns out.. HM forecast on the returns is still at the 13% level.. so im not sure if this would affect us badly, as it would seem
Forecast 13%... Platform is currently 11.83, made up for retail at the old rate, institutional mostly at the old rate and some at the new rate. Add to that that institutional investors will be at the lowest fee rate and us retail investors are going to see sub 10% IMHO (no stats to back this up, just a quick mental calculation)
No matter how i run my calculator over this it seems Ugly ... Harmoney have gone underground whereas they should be giving us better examples .... i hope it won't be a case of RIP .... have they really REALLY. Thought this out well enough?
True. An automated email does fit my internet based, low cost model. It would have to be opt out/in as I dont think I would want an email everytime a loan went overdue.
Maybe they just need to start a new classification for bad debts so we can see the reason (fraud, bankruptcy, MIA, gone overseas, etc), (which could be emailed to you), but does that really help you??? All I/we need is an assurance they are doing their best to recover.
For what it's worth I calculate that if the new structure had been in place for the whole period that I have been invested my pre tax return would have reduced from 12.13% to 11.20%
Would you mind pasting your risk grade and term graphs. I suspect if your graphs are like mine the difference will be bigger. How long have you been investing
Attachment 8033
Come on Harmoney give us some realistic upfront examples ... at the moment all i can compare it to is LendingCrowd take 10% off Secured Loans ....
whereas you want 15% from me off Unsecured Loans ... various riskier grades do have a higher interest rate paid but a % fee is just that, it'll just be a larger amount taken.
My fees are currently just under 5% of interest received. So this will be a more than 3x increase. A very high level calculation that is probably wrong suggests my RAR would be 75% of current levels if the fee structure had been in place from the start so 13% x 0.75 = 9.75%. Thats getting close to the other platforms that provide higher levels of security which should do better in a down turn.
So did the originally price it wrong or was the initial total fee level bait and switch?
Not that I agree with their logic, but Harmoney are arguing that since December the interest rates charged to borrowers increased by about 2% so this will almost recoup the huge hike in their service charges to lenders from June onwards compared with pre-December. They had to try to find a less negative spin by delving into history somehow...
Yup if the two things had been linked they would of done it then, or at the very least let people know.
Wow. I'm shocked. I can't believe the size of this fee increase. It is outrageous. I was the biggest raving fan of Harmoney until today's Lender fee announcement. Its very disappointing to hear. The model showing impact is bullocks / lies / a creative statistic.
I estimate going from a 1.25% fee on interest earned up to 5% would more than compensate for stopping charges on the principle repayment fee of 1.25%. I mean hell! - go all the way up to 10% on interest earned - like LC if you must, but going all the way to 15% from 1.25% (6 fold increase?!) cannot be justified because they are dropping principle repayment fee. Crazy.
I am wondering if Harmoney ultimately want to become a business-to-peer lender as their announced charging scale does nothing to encourage the smaller investors.
Harmoney said they did this to align Harmoneys' interests with Lenders - Yeah righto - what a crock ( well ya sure as hell dropped the ball on that one with a 6 fold increase in your fees to invests!...how does that help investors/lenders? what a joke )
Can we please stay with the old fee structure. I take it all back. 1.25% on interest and 1.25% on principle is a fantastic structure. the cost of early re-write fees currently are nothing compared to the increased interest commission costs just announced - 6 fold increase in interest commission Harmoney will soon be taking.
Even 2.5% on I and 2.5% on P is better than 0% on P and 15% on I don't you think.
Harmoney have effectively just increased their fees to investors by about 200%.
I'm not happy about this at all
You're probably not too far from the truth.
I think they're trying to take things to the next level i.e. big increases in both borrowing and investment. It certainly doesn't pay so well to chuck small change in their direction. At first, the notes of $25 may have been a nice enticement for "mum and dad" investors, but it now looks like the notes are primarily used to promote fractionalisation. And investors are being nudged to put more in to make it worthwhile, just as borrowers are nudged to take on more (affordable) debt.
I don't look at my P2P portfolio as solely 1 platform. Under the old fee structure I judged that what harmony delivered best for me Was the higher risk higher return, While My A & B Grades are provided by squirrelmoney and lending crowd. For the levels of return of A & B loans I start wanting so see things like Secured loans and/or loan shield.
That said 75% of my P2P investment is with harmoney currently
My oldest loan would be reaching close to 17 months now At the moment my RAR is at ~16% after taking a hammering from the latest Fraud cases (I had invested in ALL nine fraudulent loans) Not all of these were F grades either.
Under both the old and new fees I wont be investing in A or B grade loans with harmoney, Under the new fees I wont invest in F grade either and probably not E Grade either as these are hit too hard by the new fees. So that leaves only C & D Grade and Im not sure a C & D Grade portfolio with harmoney under the new fees can make a good enough return over safer secured Lending Crowd loans to make it worth while.
Well explained Humvee. I had been reaching a similar conclusion as to cost/ benefit/risk. Harmoney should be expecting that many existing investors would be considering a gradual drawdown of their positions after such a massive jump in charges.
Thanks for the info, humvee. That's really bad luck getting stung with those fraudulent loans. I'm only with Harmoney for P2P lending but may look at the other options later. I like being able to export the spreadsheets because I'm a numbers geek. I know what you mean about unpredictability; some of my fastest/earliest repayments have come from F grade borrowers.
I'm actually looking forward to getting more data (over the years) to try and make sense of this market.