Simple is as simple does

Harvey

Posted on November 29th, 2005 at 1:50 am

Sounds good. I’ve given quite a bit of feedback over the past 6 months to people at Zopa. My main complaint is that it is still far too bitty and fiddly in the presentation of information. (I speak only as a lender.)

I just want to see how much I have lent out, who to, at what rate, what day of the month to expect repayments, and how much of that money has already been paid back.

I also want to have a real-time view of how much money I have available to withdraw or reinvest – too often the figure quoted has not been the actual amount available.

And I want all this without having to open up another window, which is annoying and confusing.

I’ll stop there (for now!). Quibbles aside, I’m still happy to be on board this interesting experiment.

JonPo

Posted on November 29th, 2005 at 7:49 pm

couple of ideas really. I work for the derivative money markets so I might have a slanted view. but here are my sugestions.

secured and Longer term loan agrements. have you thought about the Peer to peer mortgage market ? I would only be interested in lending at 3.5 times annual income and they better have a decent deposit.

Think about it what you have here is akin to the Short sterling contract. what you also need is a gilt contract. or Bund and Euribor.

real market availble future short rates e.g. Short Sterling settlement prices from yeterdays close would give borrowers and lenders a good Idea of the rates to expect over the term of the loan. e.g. the zopa market might normally trade 100 basis points above the Bank of England base rate if the market is trading with say 50basis point of rate tightening factored in over the course of the loan then borrowers and lenders can factor those in. who knows if you manage to protect your lenders from default sufficently maybe your market will fall into line with the interbank market eventually!. as you probably know though in the regualated investment exchange business there is a central counterparty that acts to remove much risk premium.

Obviously you also need to diversify into the BIG 4 currencies e.g. Euro Dollar Swisse and sterling. well maybe not swisse but hey you never know.

Another good idea I think would be if you got into the retail P2P FX business. holiday money at interbank rates now there is an idea

Michael

Posted on December 3rd, 2005 at 2:53 pm

I am a lender and I would like to see a spreadsheet that I could perhaps download showing all of the borrowers down the page with details of their contracts , start dates, amounts etc
In effect what I am asking for is a month by month cash flow projection.
I would then know month by month what is coming in and I could compare that to Zopa’s figure of waht hac actually come in.

Dave

Posted on December 8th, 2005 at 12:25 pm

Hello all – thanks for your comments.

@Harvey – We’re taking another crack at the lender information, we’ll get there! The one thing that we probably won’t be doing is to give you days that the money will be repaid on – since pretty much every day some money will be coming back to your account.

@JonPo – We have thought about other product lines…we’ve decided for now to stay in unsecured lending, but that doesn’t rule out other extensions in the future. Your other suggestions sound like quite specialised functionality that might not fit with a focus on simplicity, but thank you for the input.

@Michael – We’re thinking about downloadable data and / or better summary screens. Hopefully we can find a solution that please both you, Harvey and all our other members! (Although ‘you can’t please all the people all of the time’)

NiceGuy

Posted on December 23rd, 2005 at 11:56 am

Please, please please, when Zopa ’2.0′ is launched, use standard code that will work properly in Firefox and via a Linux based computer. Particularly, don’t have anything to do with DirectX or Java Script, They are both a security nightmare, as is Internet Explorer; Yes, in spite of it’s patches.

If the code is standard, it will work – simple as that.

Forget all the flashy gimmicks, just make it work.

If you want a good example of how a financial web site should work and any of you hold Nationwide Building Society accounts, log in a take a look. And it works on any common platform. e.g. Windows, Linux, IE, Firefox, Opera, Netscape, etc.

I too, would like a facility as suggested by Michael. Removing the day due to be paid appears to be a retrograde step, as how would we know when a payment is late?

Tim

Posted on December 23rd, 2005 at 3:25 pm

Hi NiceGuy:

Thanks for your comments.

What are the specific problems you are experiencing using Firefox on Linux?

Also, I’d be interested to hear what are the flashy gimmicks you don’t like?

We’ve designed for Explorer/Windows and made changes to ensure compatibility with Firefox/Mac and Safari/Mac. This covers most of the market.

Any other Linux users out there with any comments on using Linux with Zopa?

NiceGuy

Posted on December 24th, 2005 at 12:39 am

Hello Tim.

Thanks for your interest.

First, when I said flashy gimmicks, I was posting in generic terms, trying (perhaps badly!) to make the point, a clear easy to use site is preferable to a flashy complex to navigate alternative. So if you read anything into that, please accept my apologies.

Specifically, using Firefox either on the Windows or Linux platforms, the drop down list fails to display under “The Market”, whereas, the drop down list under the other three tags work perfectly. What I am getting on the Windows platform, is the four tabs displayed and then a blank space where the market information should be and on the Linux, some of the “middle” page appears, but the “slots” where you select the information required are appearing very narrow (height) and cannot be used for selection. They will expand minimally, but are of no use as regards selection.

On investigating further, it appears the “markets page is hanging, as there is a “Transferring data from http://www.zopa.com...” rather than the “Done” message continually in the bottom left corner.

Ah! Even more investigation using the full Mozilla application tells me this particular page needs a x-shockwave-flash plugin. Can you please expand on that and explain why that should be needed, when the other three tabs do not? I have to say, I’m very suspicious of plugins, as invariably, they end up security issues.

If you would like a screen shot of the problem, please e-mail me with a suitable address and I’ll be happy to send you examples from all the machines I use, but please be aware, they will arrive as attachments. If you want the page code as received by me, I could supply that as well.

I am anxious to dump Windows entirely, and as soon as I can get reliable rendering from Zopa, Windows is history!

dave

Posted on December 29th, 2005 at 1:19 pm

One problem I have had as a new lender (probably made worse by the holidays) is I have No idea which market my money is being lent out in. Each day I log on and the ‘unmatched’ amount keeps going down, but I have no indication of where it has gone to.

Tim

Posted on January 1st, 2006 at 11:20 am

Flashy Stuff: We could improve our navigation, I agree. We’ll be working on that in the New Year. So, there’s my first Zopa New Year Resolution: the customer experience of using Zopa will get better.

Market page hanging: that’ll probably be because you need Flash to use it.

Why did we do this ? We decided when we launched that the best way to show the market would be using graphics and we implemented this in Flash, supported by back-end scripts to feed it the data. At the moment we don’t use the graphics capability of Flash very much, but we are updating this very shortly and you will soon be showing you much, much more of the marketplace in action.

I think it’s fair to say that Flash is now an internet standard product. Back in 1999 I co-founded a company (Moonfruit) which was entirely presented in Flash and at that stage we had a big debate then about whether enough people had the Flash player. About 80% of PCs had Flash installed (and I wasn’t sure that was high enough). Since then Flash has found its way onto most PCs in the world. Macromedia claim it is “the world’s most pervasive software platform” at 97% penetration. To my knowledge there have been a couple of security issues with Flash whihc have been addressed and I’m not aware of any pervasive problems outstanding.

Bruce Chizen (Adobe CEO) said this about his acquisition of Macromedia last year: it “moves us even further away from Micosoft … they have negotiated deals with more than 100 different device manufacturers to embed their Flash player … the combination of Flash and PDF is an industry-defining technlogy platform that cuts across the multiple operating system and multiple devices”. I agree.

You can download the flashplayer here: http://www.macromedia.com/software/flashplayer.

NiceGuy

Posted on January 2nd, 2006 at 1:20 am

Happy New Year Tim.

Thanks for your response.

I’m aware of what flash is and where to get it, just sort of reluctant to use it! Not your fault, just my paranoia with security I suppose.

Whilst I accept your corporate decision to use flash, I can’t say I’m convinced it’s necessary for a financial site. As I said above, Nationwide and Halifax for example – both sites I visit regularly, have no need for flash or any other additional application. Indeed, it wasn’t until a few months ago, this issue even surfaced. Whether it was due to Firefox upgrades, or something you changed on your server, I don’t know.

You will agree I’m sure, there have been so many security breaches over the past year or so, that security has become the number one concern for both vendors and users alike. Sadly many users are totally unaware of security in any form and this only serves to perpetuate what is now organised crime infiltrating and committing hacks, phishing and the like, for all sorts of reasons.

I’ll give flash further consideration and research any issues before implementing it – but thanks for taking the time to reply.

Ayisha

Posted on January 3rd, 2006 at 10:56 pm

In response to NiceGuys mention of the Nationwide B/S web site.
Not only a reasonably useful website in what it shows and does, it also provides downloadable statements for MS Money synchronisation. Very Very useful. If your not using MS Money to co-ordinate your finacial wellbeing, then may I suggest people go have a look. Most PC’s come with it in the included software portfolio these days.

Having said all that, maybe ZOPA can include some form of MS Money synchronisation for statements showing the normal incoming and outgoing that one would associate with an account?
regards,

Dave

Posted on January 19th, 2006 at 12:54 pm

Hi guys,

We’re looking into providing downloadable data for individual members – it’s on our development list…problem is, it’s a long list. (Although I know that CTO Tim wants it – so it might happen faster…you never know!)

sebapi

Posted on January 23rd, 2006 at 6:07 pm

well, before I transfer my money as a lender, there is something I need to understand.

Is there somewhere on this site a proper technical description of your market rate setting algorithm? Seriously, I could not find the info anywhere. Is it some form of dutch auction thing, where all the lenders are getting done at the best bid?

I see a considerable amount available for loan at 0.1%. Why don’t I see loans done at this level?

Dave

Posted on January 23rd, 2006 at 6:10 pm

Hi Sebapi,

Have a look at this FAQ which should answer your question. You can find a lot more information in our help pages.

Cheers

Dave

alan

Posted on June 21st, 2006 at 11:24 pm

Yeah man, zopa is cool.

Larry Jackson

Posted on November 22nd, 2006 at 8:57 pm

Please allow us to lend & borrow money between my friends and family. I want to be able to lend $500.00 to my brother without using a marketplace or a bidding platform. I trust my friends and family more. But al still lend money to zopa members too.

mr james

Posted on April 26th, 2007 at 10:16 pm

i am a loan lender i offer loan at low rate of interest like 5% i offer loan to thoes who are in need of loan i give out loan to serious people and 5 year duration if you are interested i will want you to mail me at jamesconnor500@yahoo.com