So you have signed up on our platform and created an Investor account. What’s next? How do you start investing with Funding Societies?
This article aims to provide an explanation of how the debt investment process works.
First, Activate Your Account by Making a Deposit
In order to successfully register for an Investor account, we require you to provide some basic information so we can verify you and your email address. But in order to activate your account for investment, you must first make a deposit. For a first deposit, the minimum transfer amount is SGD 100, but you can transfer any amount for later deposits.
Your funds will be held by our appointed escrow agency, a third party who receives and disburses money to ensure no misuse of funds. Details of the escrow account will be shown when you make a deposit.
Click on the Funding Societies logo at top of the web page of your Investor account to begin depositing money. Funding Societies accepts account deposits through bank transfers and internet banking.
Next, upload a screenshot of the deposit receipt that visibly shows your bank account number and amount transferred. To confirm the screenshot, you’ll be asked to type in the numerical amount deposited, select the bank you transferred from, and select transfer type. Once these simple steps are completed, your deposit will be added to your investor balance in one business day.
Invest in Your First Loan
Once an Investor account is fully activated, you may opt to receive email alerts whenever a new note moves into Pre-Funding status on our platform.
What is Pre-Funding? On our platform, Pre-Funding refers to a period of time before the Funding process begins. Normally, Pre-Funding starts at least three hours before the Funding process. During this block of time, an Investor can review a Factsheet provided by Funding Societies to assess details of a loan opportunity. Should you choose to invest in this opportunity, setting up Auto Invest on your Investor account will automatically invest your funds into the note.
Another option to make your first investment would be to go to “Browse Loans” on your account to assess ongoing funding opportunities. Any investment with a “Funding” status is available for investment. Every financing opportunity will be accompanied by its respective Factsheet so you can review loan details and the business that your funds are going into. If you want to invest, take note of Funding time.
Picture for illustration purposes only
At the appointed Funding time, login to your Investor account and invest in the note. Minimum investment amount starts at SGD 20. To allow as many investors to participate in a financing opportunity, we have set a maximum investment amount limit per investor based on each total loan volume.
Once you’ve made an investment, whether manually or through Auto Invest, you will be able to review its progress through the “My Investments” tab on your account.
Automate Subsequent Investment – We Have Bots for That!
We mentioned Auto Invest on our previous point. Setting up this feature will automatically invest your funds into the specific Funding Societies products from your preferred set criteria. For every Funding Societies product, there is an Auto Invest bot you can configure.
Funding opportunities on our platform can be entirely completed via Auto Invest. Nonetheless, we also have the option to manually invest but manual investments are only open when there are not enough Auto Investments to fill a loan.
Worried that Auto Invest means your funds would be allocated to notes you’re not comfortable with? To solve that problem, Funding Societies sends an email alert whenever you’ve been successfully Auto Invested into a financing opportunity, with a time window of several hours prior to the investment. If you decide that you don’t like a particular note, you may simply opt out.
So how do you set up Auto Invest? Click on “Settings” on your Investor page and it will lead you to create a bot for each Funding Societies product. Select the instrument you want to make an Auto Investment bot for, then set your preferred parameters – including for the business industries you want to invest into, loan interest rates and tenors, amount range for each investment, and whether you want to enable Exhaust Balance (where you permit the bot to drain your available balance if it falls below the range of investment amount you’ve set on Auto Investment). This is useful in the case you still want to get invested into the note no matter how small the amount.
Additional Information to Note
Once a loan is fully financed, Funding Societies will disburse the money to the SME. Each investment product has its own repayment schedule, and repayments will be made accordingly depending on the repayment by the SME. To check the status of each investment on your portfolio, see the “My Investments” tab.
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Are you ready to start investing today? With Funding Societies, you can help empower local businesses while diversifying into a unique asset class of SME financing. Register to be an investor with us here!
Interested in the variety of investment products we offer? Click on our Investment Page to learn more.
Disclaimer: The information provided to you in this blog post is intended only for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal or other professional advice on any subject matter. The materials and the information provided are not intended to be and do not constitute an advertisement or solicitation. In no event will Funding Societies be liable to any party for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages for use of such information by you or any unauthorised third party.
