Swaper Review
I started in March 2018. Interest rates offered by Swaper are among the most attractive. On top of it, you can get an extra 2% profitability for customers who increase their position. The only problem is the Cash Drag, which usually ranges between 5 and 20%.
- Platform Type: Crowdlending to individuals (P2P), with loand originating from the parent company Wandoo Finance Group.
- Start: 2016.
- Modalities: Eight originators offering microloans (of several hundred Euro).
- Geographic focus: Poland, Russia, Spain and Georgia.
- Currencies: EUR.
- Return rates: 12% or 14% (12.68% average according to the platform). An extra 2% return for investments over 5000 Euro, after three months (applied only to the capital above 5000 Euro).
- Investment flow / Cash Drag: Many loans available, but never enough to keep 100% of the capital permanently invested.
- Minimum investment (per loan): From 10 EUR.
- Payment modality: Interests paid every month.
- Duration of loans: Either very short term (14-30 days) or medium to long term (12-24 months). Plus a few 6-month loans.
- Defaults: None, because the platform offers only secured loans (with Buyback). The platform does not allow to easily check the percentage of overdue loans (cannot be downloaded), but at the time of writing (October 2018), it seems to be around 30%.
- Buyback: Yes, all loans come with Buyback. The buyback is activated within 30 days for short loans, and 60 days for long ones.
- AutoInvest: Yes, there is AutoInvest. There is a manual option, but nothing is ever available. The loans are sold out with the AutoInvest function that, I imagine, almost all investors use. The AutoInvest can be configured based on the interest rate, term, amount to invest per loan, country of origin and if you want to reinvest the benefits. The typical. You can have up to ten AutoInvest portfolios, and there seems to be an online consensus that it is better to activate the ten to maximize the possibility of finding loans, which, as I mentioned, are purchased immediately.
- Secondary market: Yes, there is one. I’ve never used it, but apparently it’s really fast if you need to sell your investments. In fact, there is no distinction between the secondary and primary market, i.e. shares that are offered for sale by private investors go to the primary market.
- Interface / Tools: Perhaps a little limited. You can view and download revenue and transactions, investing in automatic format, query and filter your investments (but not download them), and see the benefits generated. Also a calculator to compute your income based on what is invested. There is the option of receiving weekly reports by email (not daily).
- Taxes: It doesn’t withhold taxes.
- Customer Support: I have contacted them only once (the questions are sent through the platform and they answer by email) and they replied within 24 hours.
- Languages: English, Latvian and German.
- Welcome promotion: There is no bonus for opening an account, at least for now. But there is Swaper Loyalty Bonus to reward investors with more than 5000 EUR, who get an extra 2% for new investments.