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Funding Societies
- Overview
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USER RATINGS
User Experience
4.1
Portfolio Transparency
3.4
Customer Support
3.9
Quantity of Deals
3.3
Quality of Deals
3.1
Reviews (129)
3.5
129 Reviews
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- Updated 1d ago
Purchased
Funding Societies
I have been investing on Funding Society for the last 6 months, I have had some late payments but no default so far. I think the platform is great, quite a few opportunities for investment although a lot are very small notes and it is difficult to invest large amounts in all deals. I like the fact that the notes are usually short term and that you can collect the payments quite fast. However one factor that has also been limiting my investment is the high fees (18% of returns). In a way it's good to keep FS incentivized to collect payments, on the other hand it's higher than other platforms I use.0 comments0 - Updated 1w ago
Purchased
Funding Societies
-I have been investing with FS for almost 2 years. -Initially deposited ~5k but withdrew over time due to difficulty of lending and some defaults -Currently have earned about 600 interest and have about 1.2k in defaults (making it a net loss over two years) Now onto the good and bad. Good: - UI is great. I find it to be the most intuitive UI along with Seedin's - Multiple different kinds of products Bad - Extremely difficult to utilize your funds if you put in anything more than a few thousand. Took me months to get funds loaned out and it happened with my funds being allocated to borrowers with stacking loans (which is also my fault as I allowed that). Those borrowers happened to be the ones who defaulted and caused my portfolio to be loss making - Recent cases seem to be lower in quality Personally, I think P2P lending in this environment to be not particularly attractive in terms of risk/reward, and especially now in such a tough market for SMEs. My investment portfolio of random stocks and funds performed much better than my P2P investments over the last 2 years. For newer investors looking to get into p2p lending, I would personally go with SeedIn as my preferred choice as I have yet to have any defaults with them. Quantity of deals is far lower than FS but the deals are typically larger and with less investors so it's easy to get your money to work. Also, they are extremely selective and stringent with their deals so defaults have been low since day one.1 comment0
Funding Societies Singapore10h ago
Hi Roy, thanks for supporting and investing with us over the last 2 years. We're sorry to learn of the defaults you've incurred. Our endeavour is to provide quality investment options on the platform and hence we end up rejecting a lot of loan applications which results in lesser number of options on the platform. To address this, we have been introducing new products which will help with more investment options as well as diversification. We also impose a max limit of investment per loan to limit concentration risk for investors in unsecured investments, while for deals such as property backed ones there is usually no max limit and investors may choose to deploy a higher amount based on the fact that it is backed by local properties in Singapore. There is also the Guaranteed Returns Investment product where the allocation may not be very high but the additional guarantee provides the extra layer of protection for investors. We do however acknowledge that we can further improve allocation and reduce concentration risk for investors and we are actively working on tools to be able to provide that. As part of our business in recent times and moving forward in the current Covid situation, we have heightened our requirements even more. We focus on favoured industries that can thrive well under current circumstances such as healthcare, cleaning & maintenance services with an added emphasis on a strong source of payment. Many of the notes that we’ve listed recently under these requirements have been promptly repaid. You should still be receiving notifications about our upcoming crowdfunds and we would like to encourage you to review the fact sheets of these deals that we’ve mentioned to re-consider investing with us again. We believe that we only put quality deals on the platform and would be happy to also take you through some of the notes you deem to be of lower quality and explain the rationale as to why we put them up. - Updated 2w ago
Purchased
Funding Societies
[Debt Recovery] Funding Societies place no emphasis once a borrower defaults. Close to 0 chance of getting any penny back. Faced big losses with lack of Due Diligence from Funding Societies when they just throw all the risks at investors. Our interests does not align based on the current model where they just solely collect fees regardless if notes defaults. Summary, I will not use the platform to invest again2 comments0Funding Societies Singapore27 Apr 2020
Hi Kenny, we’re sorry to learn about your losses. We definitely do not list notes that are of inferior quality. Instead, we focus primarily on issuers who have the potential to expand or offer bridging financing, which is usually the case for Invoice Financing notes. Our fact sheets display clearly the financial information of the issuer, which show that all notes are not loss making at the time we underwrite them. On rare occasions where loss making companies are funded, this is because they have met cash flow requirements as evidenced in their bank statements. At Funding Societies, we also co-invest in all of the notes issued so as to align our interest with investors. With this in mind, we do put a high emphasis on debt recovery. This is because we only charge service fees on a success basis, which means that if the issuer doesn’t pay, neither do we charge our investors. Not having successful repayments would also mean a revenue loss for us. We standby our default rates - these figures are derived as per the regulator’s standard. Please also note that big capital losses are more likely a result of concentrated exposure to a few issuers rather than the default rate itself. Having said that, we'd like to assure you that recovery efforts are always ongoing, although may not always be successful. We’ve had success on recovery back in 2018 where defaults were almost fully recovered and there were also several successful recoveries back in 2019. As usual, should you have more questions, we are happy to answer them at [email protected] or on our live chat.
GC1w ago
Kenny Tan, your statements are sweeping in general and without considerations of the scenarios that happened behind the scene. It will be better to explain your position in stating the kind of "emphasis" and "Due Diligence" based on your expectations. Objectively speaking, recovery efforts aren't solely dependent on Funding Societies. Companies which had defaulted must not only be willing, but also having the capability to make repayments thereafter for recovery action to see certain degree of success. Comparing across P2P platforms, the fact sheets provided gave sufficient information albeit having room for more improvements (beefing up on financial analysis instead of just elevated commentaries). So on the aspect of due diligence, it varies across platforms and even across financial institutions in the industry. You are right that investors bear a certain degree of risks. But you manage your own risks, not Funding Societies. If you are not able to stomach investment risks, perhaps you might want to leave your funds with the banks as the Singapore Deposit Insurance Corporation Limited (SDIC) insures up to a sum of S$75,000 should the financial institution fails. - Updated 2w ago
Purchased
Funding Societies
Started on this platform after researching about 5-6 of them available at that time. Finally settled on FS and another. Have participated in just over 60 investments since starting out in Jan 2020 - with 1 missed payment so far. Returns on total cash deposited is around low single digits currently - it has been a tough 2nd quarter for everyone, so can't really complain. [Customer Support & User Friendliness] Has been great so far. I suggest going down to their office if and when they start organizing info sessions again to get a better feel of the people and the process behind what is shown on the screen. [Portfolio Diversification] Has a the highest number of loans among the various providers, so thankful for the auto-invest feature. With one of the lowest minimum investment sum requirements, it is easy to achieve diversification for accounts starting out with lower capital. Do note however, that there are quite a number of repeat borrowers with ongoing loans.0 comments0 - Updated 2w ago
Purchased
Funding Societies
[Portfolio Diversification] Over the course of 8 months, I have participated in about 130 campaigns - the rationale is to spread your monies across a big pool of loans to reduce the value at risk in the event a loan defaults. That said, I do notice that a couple of loans have been repeat borrowers who currently have outstanding loans so keep an eye on that . [Lending Experience] More likely than not, campaigns which are small in notional value are filled up by auto-invest bots and this makes manually investing in the campaigns is close to impossible. I preferred the secured loans - usually FS would have the 1st charge on the property , however deals for that lower in quantity compared to invoice financing. I have managed to participate in about 8 property secured deals - on average that would be one a month . They have introduce the "guaranteed returns" facility by FS Capital - however FS is unwilling to reveal the financials of their sister company - the default answer you have is that they have a cash buffer in the event of a default which is not very reassuring . [Customer Support] Generally they are prompt in their replies . [Debt Recovery] I have had 2 loans defaulting after participating in about 130 -140 deals - which is expected given a published default rate of high 1ish % on their portal. FS updates the ongoing process and actions done periodically when there are updates. [Conclusion] Given the net yield of mid 2ish% with a default rate of high 1ish% default rate with a diversified loan portfolio after 8 months, i would say the risk for the retail investor is not really worth it given the economic outlook for SMEs.0 comments0
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About Funding Societies
Funding Societies | Modalku is the largest debt crowdfunding platform in Southeast Asia. It is licensed in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, and backed by Sequoia India and Softbank Ventures Asia Corp amongst many others. It provides business financing to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which is crowdfunded by individual and institutional investors. In 4 years, it has helped finance over 1.4 million business loans with over S$1.2 billion in funding. It was awarded the MAS FinTech Award in 2016, the Global SME Excellence Award at the United Nations’ ITU Telecom World in 2017, Fintech Top 100 by KPMG in 2018 and Brands for Good in 2019.
Types of investments with Funding Societies
Funding Societies provides investment opportunities into notes issued by SMEs for financing facilities such as Property-backed Secured Financing, Business Term Loans and Invoice Financing. The interest charged to the SMEs is the return on investment for the investors who co-invest into the notes through the crowdfunding platform. For certain investments such as the Property-backed one, SMEs need to provide a residential or commercial property, usually with a first charge. Also, certain investments are guaranteed for both principal and interest.
What do you need to know as an investor?
- Investment starts from just S$20
- Majority of the investments are short term with a maximum tenor of 12 months
- Monthly repayment for most products provides liquidity and also allows investors to re-invest for a compounding effect
- Interest rates are typically between 4% - 8% per annum for the guaranteed and property backed notes and goes up to 8% - 18% per annum for Invoice Financing and Business Term Loans
- ‘Skin in The Game’ philosophy - Funding Societies co-invests with the platform investors in most notes
- Sign up through the web or download the Funding Societies mobile app to invest on the go
Risk Management for Funding Societies
Default by the issuer is the primary risk that investors get exposed to with this type of investment. Funding Societies conducts a detailed assessment on the SMEs based on a framework which combines a mixture of hard and soft data including but not limited to credit bureau ratings, bank & financial statements, cash flow projections, site visits, strength of guarantors, marketability of collaterals and business's capacity to repay the facility.
Specifically for Property-backed collaterals such as residential or commercial properties owned by the issuers or guarantors are held to mitigate credit risk exposures
Investors’ funds are handled by a 3rd party escrow agency, Vistra.
Minimum investment and fees for Funding Societies
The minimum investment for Funding Societies is S$20.
Funding Societies can be contacted via
- Live Chat (on website)
- Email: [email protected] (for General enquiries) and [email protected] (for investments related matters)
- Phone: 6221 0958