Grupeer Suspends Payments to Investors | Hacker News Reader

Grupeer Suspends Payments to Investors

grupeer.com

36 pointsgdm8522 comments

Reads like a typical Ponzi scheme that just collapsed.

If they were for real, they'd announce reduced revenue and show financial statements. Sure, they're experiencing some bad debt. But not 100%.

>a typical Ponzi scheme that just collapsed.

doesn't sound that way https://www.grupeer.com/why-grupeer

"Grupeer is different from other p2p investment platforms. We are creating a safe environment for our clients and offer three different investment types. Our primary objective is to bring high returns to our clients with minimal risk."

and on the same page below:

"Secondly, investments are secured with BuyBack Guarantee. This means that if the borrower goes bust, our partner- the loan originator is required to buyback the defaulted loan and insure the repayment of the principal and interest in full amount."

Is that why they are suspending payment? The BuyBack Guarantee?

If I’m reading this right then the “loan originator” is both the recipient of the Capital AND the guarantor of the buyback if it goes south.

That’ll end well.

Looks like a brother system team that worked in construction and moved into lending:

https://www.revenue.land/grupeer-interview

That's always the problem with "guaranteed" loans. Who's the counterparty, how much money have they got, and how strong are your claims against them?

Trying to fund a guarantee with some clever trading strategy usually comes apart in the next downturn. See the history of "portfolio insurance".[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portfolio_insurance

> high returns to our clients with minimal risk

That's classic ponzi language.

Upside and risk go hand in hand. You can't sustainably produce one without the other, else everyone would be infinitely wealthy.

man, it is the reason i posted it. Sometimes people completely miss sarcasm :)

Wow it's almost like a Ponzi isn't going to straight up tell you "Hey guys, we're a Ponzi!"

They're going to do everything they can to weasel the language into making it sound like it isn't, when it really is.

This is the first of many such organizations that are going to go through this. All these collective funding platforms LendingClub.com, Prosper.com, FundingCircle.com, YieldStreet.com, WunderCapital.com etc are going to be forced to suspend payments to their investors as their clients face ongoing economic hardships.

They had me at: Register Now, Add Funds, Get Profit. I can't give them my money fast enough....

Sounds like loan repayments (ie principal + interest) are suspended indefinitely. This is the risk you take when you are expecting a 10+% return on property dev and payday loan investments.

Prosper and LendingClub loan marketplaces are of similar high risk profile in the US (the only borrowers on those platforms are those who couldn’t borrow from banks or other traditional lenders). I expect those investors will end up with interest and principal losses as well, the cost of investing in consumer subprime debt.

Didn’t that happen during the last recession? I don’t understand why people still put money into these unsecured loan companies.

I believe both LendingClub & Prosper started after the last recession.

Prosper existed before the 2008 GFC/recession. I had thousands of dollars worth of notes that went bad during it.

Thank you for correcting me, I was under the wrong impression

For an unsecured lender, this is basically the apocalypse. Let's do the math - numbers are US, but most of the major Western economies are going through some version of this.

- 30% household unemployment

- 90+ day shutdown of most retail / service businesses

- Implicit Mortgage and Rent holidays (no enforcement)

- Other household assets are tanking (stocks, real estate)

- Small business restart will be brutal, since the personal balance sheets & credit of owners are getting devastated

So... payment on unsecured loans... bwhahahahah. Speaking as a former banker, I'm guessing what - a 40% delinquency rate during Q2 and part of Q3? We're not just talking about the unemployed people - others have hours cut, money lost on investments, business slowdowns, etc.

Not to mention most of the population probably won't give a damm about you trashing their credit score at this point. What's the point? It's all crap now...

Oh wait... I haven't gotten to the best part. If a loan is 60 days delinquent, these guys have to buy it back per the terms of their deal. That's why they froze this thing...

At this point, it is a race between their cash reserves (what % they held back to support buybacks) and the unknown peak of a massive wave of 60 day delinquencies....

> That's why they froze this thing...

You're picturing it "too honest": there are allegations of misconduct which I am afraid (given the bad quality of the recent official posts) might be true, see for example:

https://kristapsmors.substack.com/p/covid-19-first-p2p-victi...

Hmm... I agree that looks sketchy.

If I'm reading it right, their business model is "eBay/Amazon for purchasing secured loans", is that right?

Are they saying they're just suspending interest payments to investors, or have they actually disappeared their investors' capital indefinitely?

Is this just a smaller, sketchier Lending Club?

> The team of Grupeer has been working with legal experts on finding solutions acceptable to all parties involved.

It looks ugly.

Seems like if this wasn't a Ponzi scheme, they would stop soliciting new investments on the homepage.

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