NB the company is run by a guy from Whakatane that actually has more skill and nouse than most of the AK property spec /finance company morons put together. Bernard a story on Mr George,his ethos and the companies history would be great.

Could Clive be contracted to Allied Farmers for a short while to show them how it is done?

I work for Asset Finance and wouldn't usually comment, but I would like to throw a few facts into the mix here: Asset Finance has been around since 1997. We are not a micro lender - our average loan is around $6500 and average term around 18 Months.

We do pay our investors more than most and we have been doing so for the past 13 years. And when you are paying 10 or 11% p.a. for funds, obviously you can't lend money as cheaply as a bank, but I can assure you our annualised weighted average return is a small fraction of the 350% p.a. micro lenders (apparently?) get. If we were getting anywhere near that, we would be able to pay investors even more than we do. But in reality if you divided the 350 by 10 you would be getting closer.

Careful what you say Blair, I presume you don't want to be 'advertising' under the Securities Act :-)

Crafty Clive....  sticks to his niche and has a solid group of loyal depositors....  good on him...

Default rate:

It's a hard question to answer these days. You can refer to notes 5 ("Impairment") and 26 ("Asset Quality) of our audited accounts for details. Email for a copy of this along with our investment statement.

From an accounting point of view, any loan 1 day or more in arrears is classified as in default (2 or 3 years ago it was about 90+ days past due, but that is no longer the case). We have a fairly large number of loans (3500) and the majority of them have fairly small weekly or fortnightly P&I payments (usually between $40 and $80 a week).

People of course miss payments. Rather than immediately act upon our security, we use our common sense and let them make up on the missed payment by paying a little extra each week. This does mean we always have a large number of accounts in default, however the majority of these people are short term defaulters and they pay given the time they need (in note 26, these are 'past due but not impaired assets'). The key is to keep on top of them and not let things get out of hand.

In terms of loans that are not specifically impaired, note 26 shows we had $398,821 worth of loans more than 120 days in arrears as at 31 March 2010.

If you look at loan write offs and movements in specific and collective bad debt allowances, the profit for 2010 included impairment charges of $1.2 million. This figure is very high when compared with most of our history, but it only works out to 4.9% of total assets (although I would tend to measure it against another metric, say income - it's 14.62% of total income)

In relation to stability - we are in a cyclical business and the general economy has an impact on defaults. We expect that as the economy improves, so to should the level of our impairment charges, as well as the level of our specifically impaired and restructured accounts.

Also note that thge $1.2 million figure above doesn't factor in money we have collected from prior year write offs ($168,938 in the 2010 financial year).

Please call 0800 657 800 for a copy of our investment statement or Prospectus.

No problem.

Also in terms of the Securities Act I should have mentioned a few more things in case my posts are seen as advertisements:

1. The minimum investment amount we accept is $500.

2. Asset Finance has a long term counterparty credit rating of ‘B’ / Outlook Negative, issued by Standard & Poor’s (Australia) Pty Limited (“S&P”). This is an issuer rating and is based on local currency (ie New Zealand dollar).

S&P is a ratings agency approved by the Reserve Bank under section 157J of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act 1989.

3. As at 31 March 2010, Asset Finance had total assets of $25.06 million and total liabilities (excluding shareholder funds) of $22.39 million.

As previously mention, more information is available in the investment statement and prospectus, these are freely available by contacting 0800 657 800 or emailing invest@assetfinance.co.nz