June has been a good month, with a profitability of 7.1% (compared to 6.5% in May). P2P Crowdlending platforms and P2B Crowdlending platforms have improved their profitability compared to May, up to 11.6% and 6.9%, respectively, unlike Real Estate Crowdfunding platforms that have dropped to 4%.
Main news on my portfolio
The main News of the month can be summarized as follows:
- In May, I have started to invest in Reinvest24
- In April, I started investing in Kuetzal and Crowdestor
- Soon I will add the technical cards for Neo Finance and Twino, where I’ve been investing for eight months now. For the moment, this month I added Neo Finance and WhiskyInvestDirect to my monthly analysis.
- I increased my positions in Estateguru, Crowdestor, Linked Finance and Housers. And I have decreased my position in Finbee
- The best platforms in terms of XIRR are 1) real estate: Bricks & People (now operating through the SociosInversores.com platform) and Estateguru; 2) P2B: Envestio; and 3) P2P: Finbee, Grupeer and Fast Invest.
- The best monthly returns were 1) real estate: Bulkestate and Estateguru; 2) P2B: Kuetzal; and 3) P2P: Finbee, Grupeer and Fast Invest.
- For Mintos, I present the combined returns (all currencies, taking into account the exchange rate), as well as the return rate separately for each currency (without applying the exchange rate).
- To compare all platforms, check my Comparator.
- The gray shading indicates inflated returns due to specific promotions, while the yellow shading shows that the returns are likely to be lower due to unpaid or delayed projects without a final decision.
All interests are calculated before deducting taxes.
Delays and defaults
- Worrying situation in Housers, with seven defaults (in fixed rate opportunities) and another five delays (in investment opportunities).
- Also very worrying is the situation in Flender with five defaults
- Brickowner remains with two delayed projects.
- Delays in Estateguru have increased from 7.4% to 7.8% and the defaults have reached 4 (1%).
- Linked Finance It increased slightly to six defaults and maintains the five delays.
- The delays and defaults of Finbee fall within the expected, being a platform without Buyback. The case of Fellow Finance is a bit more worrying, given that the defaults are not compensated so far with the profitability of the active loans.
- The “delays” of real estate platforms as Inveslar are not surprising either – property sales take time and so far delays are only a couple of months late. In the case of Privalore it starts to be worrisome since they are already several months old and affect 4 of my 6 active investments.
- CrowdEstate does not allow to easily check for delays. There are some, but it is difficult to define how many unless one consults each project one by one.
- To compare all platforms, check my Comparator.
*Variation in the number of active projects from last month; I only include platforms without Buyback; Green if the parameters (delays and defaults) have improved compared to last month and red if they have worsened.
** NEO Finance does not allow to check for historic defaults, i.e. once sold (with penalty).
Real Estate Crowdfunding:
Brickowner
In Brickowner, since all the investments are long-term and paid in full at the end of the project, my profitability remains at zero (since I started operating with the platform in May 2018). In April, I experienced the first two delays.
After rapid growth in 2018, Brickowner has opened an investment round in 2019 on Seedrs.
In Bulkestate, being all investments long-term and paying in full at the end of the project, I saw no returns until December, when my first two projects ended. The return rates are excellent (always above 13%) and historically there are 0% defaults, so my strategy is to continue investing in each new project.
In June, I finally managed to reinvest all the money in my portfolio (see the second graph), so returns should increase again in the coming months. The net annual return offered by CrowdEstate, taking into account just the return rates of already reimbursed projects (22) is 13.9%. I’m still really satisfied, especially with the timeliness of payments and absence of defaults so far.
My strategy is to continue investing in each new project, except those funded in several stages ( “Multiple rounds investing”), as I believe it goes against the principle of diversification. Basically it would mean investing several times on the same project.
In June, Crowdestate announced that they will offer to diversify portfolio for the investors in Georgia. Also, they announced that they are slowly experimenting with an interest auction solution instead of the usual pre-booking so that projects are not so extremely over funded. Finally, they have written an overview of all the Risk Rating’s parameters here.
In Estateguru, the net annual return offered by the platform, taking into account only the returns of already reimbursed projects, amounts to an impressive 14.1%. The delays of Estateguru, remain in their usual figures, about 5% of the loans (7.8%), and the defaults jump to 4, after having dropped to just one last month.
My strategy is still to invest in each new project, except in those funded through several tiers (in which I only I invest in one, usually the first, of the tiers).
In june, EstateGuru announced the new possibility to download your account statement.
In May, EstateGuru announced that investors have provided more than €113 million to Baltic businesses. Over 23,000 investors have joined the EstateGuru platform. More than €6.8 million interest earned by investors. Also, the historical LTV for all funded loans remains under 58%, showing the conservative nature of our EstateGuru’s management.
The situation is still worrying in Housers, with seven defaults (in fixed rate opportunities) and another five delays (in investment opportunities). Most fixed-rate projects with defaults Most projects have agreed to new payment schedules that include interest for late payment. One of them has already begun to pay for it and all the remaining ones are expected to begin payments in July. The saving or investment projects that used to be paid even several months before the projected start to accumulate some delays, at the moment moderate.
As a result, I have decided to change my strategy: to reduce my investments to 100 Euro per project and to operate more in the secondary market.
In May, there were changes in the shareholding and administrators of three promoters that control 7 of my active projects (BREDA, CERTOSA, DONADONI, MERANO, PALAZZO PITTI, SAN GALLO and SEMPIONE). It has taken a few months for the management companies to take control of them, this being the reason why the projects have been delayed in their payments. Some of the payments have already been updated in May and others will in the coming days.
In May, Housers has launched a new system to rate projects designed by Silva & Asociados.
In May, Housers has turned four years old. Housers finances projects in three countries (Spain, Italy and Portugal), has more than 106,000 registered users from 155 different countries. Investors have invested more than 83 million Euro in the platform and the promoters have returned more than 28 million Euro between returns and capital returns.
In Inveslar, most projects are quite long term, so the benefits are mainly from the rentals. In May, we were notified of the sale of two projects and in June, 3 more were financed (some in several phases).
Inveslar, like Housers, seems to have definitely shifted in terms of the type of projects offered to fixed rate mortgage loans, as opposed to the savings or investment projects they used to offer.
Privaloreoffers only investment opportunities (rehabilitation), which translates in very unreliable returns. Since over one year (March 2018), the platform offers only opportunities in Madrid, whereas previously it focused exclusively on Barcelona. The biggest downside is that four of my six active investments are quite late (two of them 7 and 9 months late), so I have decided not to invest in any new project until the delayed ones catch up.
Crowdlending P2B:
Envestio is still the platform with the best return rate (18.1%!). To take into account that almost all the new opportunities that are appearing, are in fact new tiers of financing of the same project (up to thirteen tiers sometimes), so investing in them, does not increase the diversification.
The biggest drawback is that the success of Envestio causes new opportunities to be sold in a matter of minutes. To add the absence of any project for over a month. For this reason, I currently accumulate more than 30% of CashDrag, which is having a very negative effect on profitability (13.7% in May). For weeks now, the offer of new projects is supposed to be imminent according to various sources, but we are still waiting.
Looks like Envestio is considering offering AutoInvest in the coming months. It would be a very positive change. If they also increase the offer of projects, Envestio will once again become one of my favorite platforms. With the return rates offered and Buyback (!), I intend to increase my position in the coming months (hoping that the offer will increase).
There are already five defaults in Flender. The defaults are not yet recorded as losses. We will still have to wait (probably) several months before knowing how they resolve. Flender has started legal activities to recover them (estimated at a 35% probability). I understand that it falls within the norm, although we are already talking about a default rate of 6.9%, the highest of all platforms, not counting P2P platforms without Buyback.
The Irish platform is the most active by far of all P2B platforms I use. Yields have been increasing progressively to stabilize around 8%. Linked Finance is one of my favorite platforms. Only 6 defaults (out of 510 projects!) and 5 projects with delays. I intend to continue investing in all new projects. In fact, I increased my positions by 2.8% since last month.
In June, Linked Finance announced that they have reached € 100 million in total loans.
The big problem of October to date, are the three projects in the process of judicial recovery (2.3% of the total), to which we must add three other delayed projects that seem to be following the same path. The result is a huge downturn in May profitability. Although this can be considered normal in this type of platforms, these incidents have made my IRR slightly negative after over one year of investing in the platform (-0.9% to be precise). On a positive note, to clarify that, unlike other platforms, October provisions 100% of the amount (since the judicial recovery processes take a long time and the result is unknown). Provisions are potential losses and over time some or all of the amount due may be recovered. The rest of the platforms do not consider such losses until the judicial recovery process ends. Hopefully there will be no more setbacks and my XIRR will gradually recover.
I have decided to stop making new contributions until I have a clearer picture how the defaults evolve. Until returns do not become positive. I will just reinvest the principal returned and interest. I have also reduced each investment to the minimum allowed (20 Euro).
The Euro amount of each project has increased, so now, despite the absence of AutoInvest, there is more time to invest.
October has started to operate in Germany, the fifth country in 4 years. Due to the restrictions of German regulations, the projects of this country will not be open to private investors for the moment, although October is working to make it possible in the future.
P2P Crowdlending:
In Dofinanceafter 6-7 months with loans at 9% maximum, loans at 11% are back since April. VIP Dofinance investors can get up to 12% (1% extra) during the first 90 days (10% VIP status) using my promotional LINK In my case, unfortunately, I will still have to wait one month for my current investments at 9% before I can renew at 11%.
Dofinance represents the maximum of simplicity in the way it operates. Once the target profitability and term have been chosen, our inputs end and there is nothing left to do but wait.
In June, Dofinance announced a new product: Auto invest invoice factoring. Also in June, Dofinance announced that they will give 1% cashback for investments made in July. This offer will start on 8 July and will be valid until 31 July. There is one condition: minimum investment term should be 6 months.
Dofinance in numbers: In June, there were 3,900 registered clients, 40% of German investors, followed by Spain (22%), Italy (11%) and the Netherlands (10%). The average investment amount was 2,695 euros and an average period of 6.8 months investment, with a 9% automatic investment as the most popular investment program.
Fast Invest is one of my favorite platforms. Since February, unfortunately, we have stopped seeing loans at 15% as we used to.
Throughout 2018, the average interest rate grew from 12.78% to 14.3%. Accumulated turnover increased from € 5.2 million to € 73 million (22.05/2019). The volume of investment grew from € 1.4 million in 2017 to € 20 (by 22/05/18). Now Fast Invest has over 30,000 client (15/02/2019).
Very disappointing results for the moment. Interest rates are really attractive (up to 55%!), but without Buyback, so I’ve been a bit more cautious investing than with other platforms. As of today, the many defaults do not compensate for the higher returns offered, leaving me at the end with negative returns, at least for now. As to my strategyas they offer no Buyback, I have invested only in loans with interest rates above 48% and always the minimal amount, which in the case of Fellow Finance is quite high (25 EUR). I must say that there are other less risky loans, which surely would have resulted in a better performance than my (so far) failed investment strategy. It is a complex platform, and customer service is not particularly good, so I have many doubts about how it works.
Since May, I no longer invest in new loans with the idea of decreasing my position and eventually leaving Fellow Finance.
Fellow Finance investors funded business and peer-to-peer loans worth around 15.2M€ in June. Cumulative loan volume grew over 469 million euros and the total number of investors grew to 13 050. January-June 2019 loan volume was around 109M€ (growth 42,5%, January-June 2018 loan volume was around 76,5M€).
Although the yields obtained with FinBee are so far excellent (a XIRR of 16.5% selecting only loans above 18%), being a platform without Buyback, I am still awaiting how the platform will evolve medium-long term once the (many) defaults stabilize. Overdue and unpaid loans account for 13.8% and 11.9% of my portfolio, respectively.
The recovery rates of loans in arrears: 56.15% of the money invested by insolvent customers as of 2016 and 40.21% as of 2017. The collection process has not ended, so these indicators should continue to improve in the future. However, for investments after March, FinBee has announced that it will compensate 30% of the loans in arrears. Doing a quick calculation, this implies that profitability, once the defaults begin to realize, will be reduced considerably below what’s currently offered by platforms with Buyback (7-8%?), So since June, I have stopped reinvesting profits and have started to withdraw them from the platform.
is one of my favorite platforms, with consistent results and returns always between 13 and 15%, although the average interest of loans has decreased and we no longer see loans at 14 or 15% as we used to. During June, Grupeer offered Cash Back promotions of 1% for some originators and real estate projects.
New originators in June:
- Pozyczka Pieniedzy by Sando Money Group is joining Grupeer to offer business loans (from Poland with a 13% interest rate and 12 months term) and with 1% CashBack until 17 July.
- Credito, from Estonia, which offers just one product – a consumer loan up to EUR 3,000, BuyBack, 12% return rate and a term of 11-12 months.
When presenting my results, Mintos is more complicated since I invest in five different currencies. The graph shows in red the combined results of the platform (converting each currency to EUR according to the exchange rate of each month). This means that monthly profitability is very susceptible to variations in exchange rates.
Since October I invest manually, both in the primary and secondary markets.
The maximum yields offered by loans in EUR each day have increased to 15-16% since April and they’re offered by about ten originators. The interest offered by loans in Tenges (KAZ) and rubles (RUB) remain stable between 17 and 19.5%. Usually there are always available both in the primary and secondary markets.
The best IRRs (at the moment) are my investments in Kazakh tenges, Georgian laris and Russian rubles (16.8%-17.1%).
The loans in sterling pounds (GBP) and Georgian laris (GEL), are scarce lately in both the primary and secondary market, but 2-3 times a month, new loans are offered, so the problem of Cash Drag is not important.
In June, Mintos launched a new product, Invest & Access, which makes investing and withdrawing your money quick and easy, but at lower rates that what you could get with AutoInvest or manual investment.
Also in June, Mintos will update the risk ratings for the following loan originators.
- Agrocredit – upgrade from B+ to A-
- Cashwagon – upgrade from C+ to B-
- Credilikeme – upgrade from C to C+
- Credius (Romania) – upgrade from B to B
- Dinero – upgrade from C+ to B-
- ID Finance (Spain) – upgrade from B- to B
- Metrokredit – upgrade from C+ to B-
- Varks – upgrade from B to B+
Mintos continues to increase the number of originators, countries and products. During June, Mintos welcomed the following loan originators:
- Lendrock, a car loan provider based in Spain offering EUR 4,000 loans up to 14% with a maturity of up to 4 years.
- Dziesiątka Finanse now offers its Poland-issued personal loans listed in PLN and EUR. The loans range from PLN 500 to PLN 15,000 with a maturity of up to 2 years. You can expect a net annual return of investment up to 14%.
Since June, Cashwagon offers short-term loans of up to EUR 300, net annual returns of up to 15% and Buyback issued in Vietnam. Operating since September 2017, the Cashwagon platform has helped to facilitate more than 546,000 loans to 160,000 borrowers.
In May, Mexican loan originator Dineria.mx began operating in Mintos offering loans with Buyback guarantee and a net annual return of up to 14% in EUR and 18% in MXN. Since 2016, the company has issued more than 55,000 loans for a value of EUR 6.9 million.
Creamfinance, a loan originator which has been part of the Mintos family since 2015 has launched personal loans issued in Poland on the marketplace under the brand Lendon. Since its foundation in 2013, the company has distributed 754,045 loans worth around EUR 285 million. As of April 2019 Creamfinance Poland had a net loan portfolio of EUR 21 million.
Also since May, Mogo Finance S.A., the ultimate parent company of the Mogo Group companies operating on the marketplace, now provides a group guarantee for all Mogo loans on Mintos. This puts an extra layer of risk mitigation in place, by reducing the risk of the separate Mogo entities not being able to fulfil their obligations to Mintos investors. As a result, the rating to all Mogo group entities has been changed to A.
Mintos has announced that in the future, they will offer personal accounts (with IBAN) and debit cards. The personal account can be used to make and receive payments around the world, or receive the salary directly into the account by Mintos. But this was announced months ago and there has been no further update since.
Mintos has exceeded 2.4 billion Euro in investments (May 2019) to become the largest market for investment in loans in Europe (according to P2P-Banking), they have hired 28 new workers to almost double their workforce, they have reached 124,872 investors ( April 2018), have raised 5 million euros in a round of financing, have incorporated 31 new originators from 13 new countries, and investors have received 45.2 million in interest (May 2018).
Neofinance
This month I present for the first time the results of my first eight months with NEO Finance. I’m not too satisfied as you can see in the graph. After some really positive starts, the number of defaults has ended in negative returns in the last three months, although the XIRR remains still positive (6.1%).
My investment strategy has been so far to invest only in loans from the primary market (except 4-5 in the secondary when I started) above 17% (and up to 27%) and without a provision fund. There are too many delayed loans (35%) that end unpaid (after 90 days) with only a variable part being recovered (usually around 30-50% depending on the return rate of the loan). The last weeks of June I stopped reinvesting the benefits. Starting next month, I’ve decided to try a new strategy using the provision fund (which is basically like paying for Buyback). The provision fund must be paid in advance when making the investment, which means starting with losses. It will take a couple of months before I can evaluate the results of my new strategy.
Without offering spectacular returns, Peerberry compensates it with an amazing regularity (return rates always between 11 and 12%), minimum follow-up needed and zero Cash Drag. I intend to keep my position as long as everything stays like this.
In June, Automoney.com.ua and Automoney.com.kaz decided to increase return rates by 0.5%, which is why Peerberry now offers returns of up to 13.5%.
Peerberry in figures: In May, Peerberry achieved a volume of loans of 10.5 million and reached 8,000 investors from 64 countries that can invest in loans offered by 18 originators in 8 countries. Most loans have a duration under 40 days.
Return rates have increased since April with the payment of interest on several of the longer-term loans (180-365 days), which are paid in full at the end, so the current return rate does not reflect the real profitability of the platform ( that should be 11.8% in my case).
Robocash continues with its excellent regularity after overcoming the problems of Cash Drag of last summer. Since November, all loans are offered at 12%, compared with the previous 14%. At the moment, my strategy is to maintain my current position.
Robocash will relocate its activities to Zagreb, Croatia by March 28, 2019 in order to facilitate further dynamic growth of the platform. The only change is that Robocash will now be operating under Robocash d.o.o., a limited liability company registered in Croatia for the purpose of due regulation. There will be no changes regarding investment methods, functionality of the platform or existing interest rates.
In April, Robocash announced a Loyalty Programme for investors. Investors with ID>1,000 will receive increased interest for 3 months (from 1 September to 30 November 2019) given that they keep from 1,000 EUR on the platform from June 1, 2019 to August 31, 2019. The bonus will be accrued according to the investor’s category, which corresponds to the investor’s minimum balance as of June 1, 2019:
The first 1,000 investors who joined the platform (not my case) will receive a guaranteed bonus of 0.3% from 1 September 2019 to 31 January 2020 regardless of their balance.
Swaper seems to have definitely solved the problems of Cash Drag. In fact, this week for the first time I have seen loans available. It is not clear to me why the return rates have not increased. I’m waiting for Swaper to clarify it. My strategy is to maintain my current position or even increase it.
At the Bank and Insurance Summit 2019 in Berlin organised by the Bankingcheck and eKomi team Swaper received an award as the “Best Crowdlending Platform 2019”.
As of June, Swaper is putting more than 4 million euros worth of new loans up for investments every month, which is about an 68% increase from last year.
Also in June, Swaper’s first loan issuance country (Wandoo Georgia) said goodbye to the platform due to the new law regulations. So at the moment you can invest only in loans from Poland, Spain and Denmark.
Twino
I began to invest somewhat reluctantly in November 2018, in view of the negative comments about Cash Drag and low returns. However, after seven months, Twino has become one of my most profitable platforms (13.2%), thanks in part to the positive fluctuations of my investments in currencies other than Euro. If the situation continues like this, I do not rule out increasing my positions.
Twino announced the next version of of the Currency Exposure (CE) functionality, which lets you invest in loans that are pegged to the local currency of the specific loan originator. Starting from June, part of Russian loans will be listed with the Currency Exposure functionality and return of 14% p.a., while another part will be listed without it and return of 10% p.a. Meaning that it will not be possible to invest both with and without the CE functionality in one specific loan anymore. The loans that come with CE will be marked with a special icon near the interest rate.
Plans for July:
- An in-profile messenger is in development. It will be used as a new means of communication to make it easier to contact Twino directly from your investor profile.
- iOS app will get a new version with some minor updates/fixes such as addition of loan types at Auto-invest section, campaigns under Income at the Dashboard view, etc.
- Twino will be sharing more information on its loan originators.
End of May marked 4 years of Twino Investment platform – more than EUR 500 million worth of loans funded through the platform. Twino now is the fourth P2P lending platform in Continental Europe that has ever reached such a funding amount. Moreover, 2018 resulted as Twino’s most successful year to date with company’s net profit being EUR 3.7 million. In 2019, Twino brought Business loans (term of 3-36 months, interest rate of 8% and Payment Guarantee) and Invoice financing to the platform, allowing to further diversify.
Last Twino figures: 1) Loand funded in June: € 14,060,409; 2) Average interest of June loans: 10.35%; 3) Loans funded all time: € 518,243,261; 4) XIRR to date: 10.77%; and 5) Number of investors (as of 1 July): 17,980.
Until now it was a platform of moderate returns with excellent regularity, without Cash Drag that required a minimum follow-up. During the last few months, on top of this, there’s been a gradual improvement in the return rates, reaching values of over 13% since January (except for a brief drop in March, when I increased my positions in 9%).
Unlike other platforms, Viainvest withhold taxes. I present tax-free results to facilitate comparison.
From June, Viainvest has decided to introduce the same annual interest rate for all loan originators , which means that all loans published on the platform starting from 13.06.2019 are available for investments with a 11% interest rate! This will lead to easier investment decisions and higher average return for investors.
Also in June, Vianvest’s parent company VIA SMS Group has launched a new set of company bonds that are now available for investment.
The situation is similar to that of Viainvest. For the last two months, I only invest in loans at 14% (and some at 15-16%), so I hope that the monthly returns will continue to increase in the coming months.
And in May, the number of originators continued to increase to reach 18 originators in 10 countries with the addition of Digital Finance International North Macedonia (part of Digital Finance International and Finstar Financial Group). Investors will now be able to invest in installment consumer loans issued in North Macedonia under the brand name – Kreddy. Kreddy will offer its installment consumer loans with maturities from 3 to 12 months. The company will maintain 5% skin in the game stake in every single loan and start by offering 12%p.a. return.
Other Fintech tools:
WhiskyInvestDirectis a very innovative platform that allows you to invest in Scotch whiskey in the process of maturation. I started investing in March and I made two contributions with which I invested in thirteen different whiskeys. I hope to have time in the next months to write a technical sheet with more information about the platform.
For the moment I am quite satisfied, with a XIRR of 5.8%, although with variations in profitability (i.e. negative returns in May).
Evolution of my positions
Regarding the evolution of my positions since January 2018 by the type of investment, they remain more or less constant, although since May, my investments in P2P platforms have exceeded my investments in shares and investment funds, due to the increase in my positions in Mintos.
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