Investment Strategies is the next evolution of Auto Invest. We’ve removed the €250 minimum limit for advanced criteria, introduced three new investment strategies and wrapped it all up in a stylish new interface. Below we’ll be looking at some of the exciting new options, and how to set it all up.
Introducing Investment Strategies
Automating your investments is a useful option when a marketplace provides so many solid opportunities. So it’s no surprise that our Auto Invest has always been so popular with our users. Despite that, we did receive some constructive feedback in the time since its introduction on the platform. We have upgraded the feature by creating three Investment Strategies, with that feedback front of mind, and we think you’ll be very happy with the result.
Before you get to try it out for yourself, you’ll need to enable the feature, and it may also be a good idea to read this handy user guide, where we’ll go over the new options and how to take full advantage of them.
It’s important to note at this point that in keeping with our mission to make investment attainable to everyone, we’ve honored your requests to make €50 the entry point for all Investment Strategies criteria.
Step 1 – Consent
You can enable Investment Strategies by navigating to the ‘Invest’ page in your account. You will be directed to the ‘My Strategy’ page where a pop-up will appear detailing the terms and conditions and asking for your consent to enable the feature. Read the Terms & Conditions carefully. If you’re comfortable with what you’ve read, you can indicate your consent by ticking the box to accept the User Terms.
Step 1 – Choose a strategy
Navigate to the Invest page and then click on My Strategy, as seen below.
Now the exciting part begins. It’s time to choose your investment strategy.
Click on ‘View details’ under each strategy for more information. Once you’ve chosen your preferred strategy, you can activate it on the same page (see step 2 below). But first let’s take a closer look at the three strategies available to you.
Three strategies
We have created two strategies with predefined parameters, and also provided a third, fully customisable option, if you’d like to finetune your approach to reflect your preferences more precisely.
Conservative
This strategy represents the optimal balance between average interest rate, collateral value, and a low-risk approach. It’s the perfect fit for the more patient investor who prioritises security when it comes to their portfolio.
Balanced
Just like the name says, the approach here is tilted towards maximizing your returns while still keeping security at a premium. This is for investors with a slightly higher tolerance for risk. The perfect balance if the yield of your portfolio is your main priority.
Custom
For an in-depth look at the custom option, see our Custom Strategy User Guide.
For the more experienced investor who knows their LTVs from their collateral value and their bridging loans from their development loans, this fully customizable strategy will empower you to create a personalized portfolio.
You can view the specific criteria for each strategy by clicking on the ‘view details’ button’. We’ve also provided an overview of how many loans would have met your criteria over the previous six months, a prediction of how many will meet your criteria in the next month, and how much you can expect to invest over that time.
With the Conservative and Balanced options, everything is taken care of. You can simply choose the one you like, indicate the maximum amount you wish to assign to an individual loan, and Estateguru will automatically distribute your funds into the best suited investment opportunities after you apply it.
If you select the custom option, you will have the opportunity to customize the parameters to create a unique investment profile.
These parameters include the amount you want to make available for each investment, the repayment period, the type of loans you would like to help fund, your exposure per project and borrower, the type of security, minimum interest, preferred markets, and your maximum LTV (Loan To Value), amongst others. Click on the question mark next to each criteria selection tab for more information on what it controls. Clicking on the arrow will reveal a dropdown menu, from which you can select your preferred values.
We’ve included additional information on some of the other available criteria below:
For more background on LTV and what it means, check out Understanding Stage Loans and Cumulative Loan to Value Ratios.
For more information on First and Second Rank Mortgages, read our guide on Understanding Debt Ranking And Loan Security.
If you’re ever wondering why you haven’t automatically invested in a particular project, you will see the reason/s displayed on the My Investment section on the project’s page.
Another important change to note: whereas Auto Invest would only invest funds into new projects and not open loans, with Investment Strategies you have options. With the Conservative and Balanced strategies, investing in open loans is the default option, but if you’ve selected the Custom option, and you only wish to invest in new projects, then you can disable it. Simply find the ‘Invest in Open Loans’ criteria on the Custom Strategy page, and select ‘No’ from the dropdown menu.
Step 2 – Apply your strategy
Once you’ve selected your desired strategy (and selected your preferred criteria in the case of the custom option), we encourage you to read the terms and conditions before indicating that you agree to them by checking the box (on the settings/view details page). Then simply click apply strategy and enter your password into the field that appears. Provided you’ve enabled Investment Strategies, and there are funds in your account, you’re all set up. If you haven’t, the strategy will be registered as pending until you do.
If you wish to pause your strategy, navigate to the My Strategies page, and click on the settings button on the activated Strategy (as seen below with the Balanced strategy used as the example).
You’ll find the ‘Pause Strategy’ button under the overview of your currently selected strategy. Upon clicking it, you’ll be prompted to enter your password, before the strategy is paused.
Step 3 – Relax
With historical returns of over ten percent, and due diligence procedures designed to ensure that our carefully selected property backed investment projects are as low risk as possible, you can relax in the knowledge that your funds are being well invested, while you get on with your life.
