March 2019: back to normal

In march the European Central Bank has reacted to the threat of recession across the eurozone with a promise to keep interest rates at historically low levels for at least the rest of the year. Luckily we have crowdfunding to get good returns on our investments!

In this monthly update I’ll show you the returns and results of my crowdfunding investments.

Last month I received a huge interest payment for a project that payed the interest for two whole quarters at once. Next payment is three months away, so unsurprisingly the total interest I received this month is a lot less.

Portfolio march 2019

Last month the interest payments I received totalled €765.36. My average rate of return over all platforms remained at 11,7%. The table below shows the details for each platform.

The XIRR column contains the annualized rate of return since my first deposit into that platform. Click on a column header to sort the table by that column, twice to reverse the sort order. I have an overview page for each platform, click on the magnifier glass to visit that page.

Interest per month

Historical rate of return

The chart below shows my average return rate of all platforms combined:

Activities

To Show you how little effort is involved when investion via crowdfunding I have added an overview of the manual actions in the last month:

I did check the platforms every now and then, but this was purely for fun. It wasn’t necessary to get these interest payments and return rates.

Equity crowdfunding

I have now started to invest via an equity crowdfunding platform: Seedrs. This works a bit differently from the other platforms: instead of receiving interest payments I have bought shares in startup companies via this platform. Hopefully these companies will grow and survive, so my shares will become much more valuable.

Here you can see my portfolio overview at Seedrs:

Here the IRR looks quite nice already, but this is purely caused by the British Pound lossing value compared to the Euro. So I guess the Brexit does have a positive side after all 🙂

These are all long term investments, so I do not expect these to return something until a few years from now.

When you want to give Seedrs a try yourself, you can register via this link and receive £25 free investment credit after successfully investing £150 or more within 30 days of signing up to Seedrs.

Updates per platform

Bondora

Interest is added to my Bondora Go&Grow portfolio on a daily basis, this month that was €33.54 in total. The return rate is superstable at 6.7%.

Like I have said before Bondora is the one crowdfunding platform that resembles a savings account when you choose the Go&Grow portfolio option. Its super easy and you can withdraw your funds at any moment to your own checking account. Its an ideal option to try crowdfunding for a couple of months, it is suitable for both smaal and large investors.

When you register through this link you’ll receive a 5 euro bonus. Just give their Go & Grow option a try for a few months, and don’t try the other advanced options.

Crowdestate

My investments at Crowdestate returned €7.24 this month, and my average return rate is now 7.7%.

The amount of interest received was a bit disaapointing after the huge payment last month (184 euros), but expected. That project will now pay interest every quarter, so I expect a 90 euro payment in two months time.

Crowdestor

Crowdestor has really grown into a solid performer. The return rate is just above 10% (10,2% to be exact) and my investments returned €28.53 this month.

The interest received is noticeably less compared to last month, as the new project I invested in will start paying interest in august. Until then the return rate will start to look worse, but should be completely corrected when the large payment of 243 euros in paid. Below you can see the weird payment schedule:

This friday, april 5th, a new project will be published on Crowdestor which is a additional project by INCH2. The interest rate is really interesting: 18%.

Crowdestor introduced the “Crowdestor buyback guarantee fund” this month. The aim of the program is to safeguard the investor’s proper return in case the borrower is subject to default. They will deposit a commision of 1-2% from each funded project into this fund, and expect the pool value at EUR 100,000 by the end of 2019.

Envestio

Envestio remains my best performing platform. My investments returned € 205.55 which is about 30 euros less compared to last month. The return rate is still above 20%, at 20.1%. Not bad!

Several interesting projects became available this month, and I had the opportunity to re-invest the money of completed projects at the beginning of this month (with a nice 17% interest rate). Here you can see two examples of these projects:

At the end of the month several of the projects I invested in were completed and the invested funds returned into my account. Unfortunately I was on vacation during that time, and I missed several great projects to invest in.

The result is this is that about a third of my funds are sitting idly in my account, waiting to be re-invested (over 5,600 euros). I do expect several new opportunities in the near future, so I’m keeping a close eye on my inbox. After receiving an email about a new project on Envestio you have a few hours before the project is fully funded. This is a bit cumbersome compared to the platforms with auto-invest functions, but there’s little competition for those 17-21% interest rates!

When you register via this link you’ll receive a 5 euro bonus with your first deposit, plus a bonus of 0.5% over all your investments in the first 270 days.

EstateGuru

What should I say about EstateGuru… I did receive €13.33 which does not make it the worst performing platform. The return rate is now 6.1%.

One of my 5 investments is 73 days late. On march 18 EstateGuru indicated they have initiated default process in order to start auctioning the collateral assets. I’m curious how much of the invested funds can be recovered this way.

I haven’t given up on tho platform entirely though, and I invested 100 euros into a new project with an interest rate of 12%:

Fast Invest

I’m really happy with Fast Invest, it is one of my top performing platforms: my investments returned €122.91 and the return rate is 13.4%.

The Fast Invest site has been revamped, and it looks a lot better. It is also easier to use and navigate. They made a good platform better, although you do not really have to visit the website that much because the auto-invest fundtionality works like a charm.

Funding Circle

One of my Dutch crowdfunding platforms, Funding Circle, does reasonably well with a return rate of 8.3% an an interest payment of 48.26 euros.

Grupeer

The amount of interest I received (79.22 euros) and the return rate of 14.2% puts Grupeer in second place for me.

The auto-invest function makes Grupeer one of the set and forget platforms. Combine this with the attractive return rate, and you’ll understand why this is one of my favourites.

IUVO Group

Another one of my favourites, IUVO Group, has a return rate of 13.2% and my investments returned €112.95.

Are you planning to start investing at IUVO with larger sums of money? You can send me a message via the contact page and I’ll send you an invitation via IUVO. You’ll receive an email with a registrsation link, and you’ll get a 30 euro bonus when investing €1,000 within 2 months. If you invest more than €2,500 that bonus is increased to €90!

Lender & Spender

Lender & Spender is a Dutch crowdfunding platform which I find disappointing, considering the return rate of 3.8% (and €12.10 interest received).

Mintos

Mintos has done alright, the return rate is 9.3% and interest payments totalled €47.19 this month.

Twino

Twino did quite well this month. My investments returned €54,54 and the return rate is now 10.3%.

And finally…

That was it for this monthly update. You can subscribe via the contact page and you’ll receive an email the moment a new update is published. Or just visit again next month, that’s up to you.

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