Chewing the fat, shooting the breeze, having a natter - call it what you like, talking to people is darn important and everyone should do it as often as they can (except in libraries). We talk to our members as much as possible, through our blog and discussion board and by getting people to email contactus@zopa.com if anything's on their mind.
Instead of moaning about the banks, the bonuses and the profit margins, why not do something about it? Tom Hodgkinson, editor of Idler magazine, wrote this article in The Ecologist about the options if you want to take your business elsewhere. Let us know what you think!
Yes, that’s the big difficulty with the zopa model. To get your money out, you have to stop reinvesting, then wait for some to accumulate in your account, then take it back, and keep doing that in little dribs and drabs until its all returned.
If you are “investing” by lending then the idea surely is to build up and re-invest repayments of capital. Providing you can build up an investment over say 2 years then the repayment of interest by borrowers can be treated as a rising income so acting as an increasing annuity (providing Zopa’s credit rating is fairly accurate).
The original capital remains intact although I accapt that you may have to wait for up to 5 years to realise all the original investment-unless you expire!
This article is no longer on the Ecologist website so it might be sensible to pull this page.
Franck
Posted on December 3rd, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Zopa could be an alternative if there was an easy way to get one’s money out. Depending on the average maturity of your portfolio it can take upto 2 years to get the money out. A secondary market needs to be created for this thing to grow significantly…