October 2018: my leap of faith

In august I took my leap of faith into the world of crowdfunding and crowdlending. I also started a Dutch blog about it, and decided to translate it and maintain a English version (which you are reading right now).

I invest via 12 different crowdfunding platforms, to minimize the risks. This also gives me the opportunity to compare these platforms.

I will post a monthly overview with the interest returns per platform, my experiences and my progression towards financial freedom. Below you will find my first overview, my returns so far, and a short description of the platforms I have chosen.

Portfolio October 2018

It takes while for investments to reach their full potential, but in the two months since the start my rate of return has risen to 7.6%! Already way better than my savings account, so I’m really happy about it. Here are the details for each platform:

The value and amount invested is identical for Funding Circle. This is different from the other platforms because there is no online account which receives the interest. The interest and principal returned is deposited directly in my checking account.

The XIRR column shows the rate of return since the first deposit.

Interest per month

This month it really becomes clear what the total amount of interest is I can expect to receive each month. I couldn’t invest everything I deposited in each platform, but each platform starts to return interest.

Platforms

Bondora

Bondora has a really steady rate of return (6.75%). This is just as advertised, so I don’t expect this to change.

The Go&Grow portfolio option is really great, it is like a savings account on steroids. I’ve heard bad things about the other ways to invest, so I strongly advise to use the Go & Grow option only.

When you want to give Bondora a try, you can register using this link and you’ll receive a €5 bonus.

Crowdestate

Crowdestate is a prime example of what happens when you don’t pay enough attention. There is a secondary market where you can buy (and sell) investments from other investors. The seller sets the price, and you really have to watch out because this can result in a really bad or a really good bargain.

This is the reason the XIRR turns out negative for Crowdestate. There weren’t enough new projects to invest in, so I decided to enter the secondary market. The premium I paid will be fully compensated by the expected interest payments, but so far it makes the numbers look bad.

Crowdestor

Crowdestor is starting to pay off, but not as fast as I would like. There aren’t a lot of projects available, so I couldn’t invest 500 euros. On the other hand, this means the returns were realized with only a part of the money I deposited. So we can expect this rate of return to rise.

Envestio

Envestio exceeds the expectations. It really blows my mind that I received over 222 euros from one platform alone. This is 35% of the total interest I received this month, but I only invested 20% of my funds in this platform. This really shows the potential of Envestio.

the success of Envestio really shows, as the number of projects that are not fully invested decreases. There is one now with a return rate of 17%, and new projects are added frequently.

When you register through this link and you’ll receive a €5 bonus on your first deposit, plus a bonus of 0.5% over all your investments in the first 270 days.

EstateGuru

My investments at EstateGuru are spread out over 5 projects: 3 bridge finance loans, one business loan, and one development loan. All loans have an interest rate of 10-11%.

One of the loans is already late, but you can see on the site that EstateGuru quickly contacts the borrower to try to resolve this. It will probably have a negative impact on my returns. The rate of return is also skewed by the fact that one of the loans is a ‘full bullet’ loan, which means that both the interest and principal is repaid in full at the end of the loan term.

Fast Invest

Fast Invest seems to be one of the top performing platforms. The rate of return has increased to 10% and the auto-invest functions really well.

the loans have an average loan period of 10 months and interest rate of 13.67%, and they’re spread over England, Denmark, Spain, and Poland.

Funding Circle

Funding Circle is one of the larger crowdfunding platforms operating in the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, and Canada. It has issued loans to 62,000 businesses, and there are 88,000 registered investors.

Grupeer

My rate of return for Grupeer is now 12.2%, so this is one of the platforms I’m really exited about. This comes close to the advertised percentage of 14.4% and I have only just started here.

The auto-invest function works quite well and it has invested in loans with interest rates of 15% lately, so I expect the rate of return to increase.

IUVO Group

The loans at IUVO Group are 9.2% on average, with a maximum of 15.2%. So I’m doing OK with a rate of return of 4.7%.

The auto-invest makes it a platform you don’t have to sit on top of, the interest just keep rolling in slowly but steady. Combined with the high returns and the guarantees, this makes it one of my favourite platforms. If a loan is late by more than 60 days, it is bought back and the invested funds are returned into your account.

Lender & Spender

Lender & Spender is a Dutch crowdfunding platform, so that’s close to home for me.

The average interest rate is 5.1%, my 4.5% is already quite close to that. My investment is spread over 705 loans, so all in all it looks like a low risk platform. That also explains the lower interest rates.

Mintos

My rate of return at Mintos is now 5.2%. Not that high compared to other platforms, but it is a lot higher than any savings account.

The average interest rate on the 11.6%, so there is lots of room for improvement.

Twino

Twino also seems to be doing quite well. 8.4%, so no complains here. This platform is also quite safe with the buyback and payback guarantees.