June 2019: a busy month

Last month was one of my busiest months. I visited the P2P confererence in Riga, you can find my report here. I also visited the offices of several P2P platforms in Riga. These reports will follow soon too. While I was in Riga I also went to see a Crowdestor project which is located in Riga, you can read more about it in the platform update below.

Portfolio overview June 2019

Last month I received € 829.30 in interest. I know it would be a lot lower than last month, which was a record month, but I expected it to be lower than this. So this was a pleasant surprise! My average rate of return over all platforms is the same as last month: 11.9%. 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 income per month

Activities

To show you how little effort is involved when investion via crowdfunding and crowdlending 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.

Platform updates

Bondora

My investments at Bondora returned € 35.49 last month, and my average return rate remains steady at 6.8%.

Bondora posted an update with some defaulted loan statistics, and how much money they recovered. They reported that they recovered 30% more in May, compared to April (almost half a million euro). The total percentage recovered in 2019 increased to 78%, which sounds ok, but the overall percentage over the last 5 years is only 49%.

Of course this only matters if you don’t invest via the Go&Grow portfolio option, but this is something I cannot recommend. It does make it easier for Bondora to maintain the interest for the Go&Grow at the advertised 6.75%, so that is a positive thing. And that is what really matters: to be able to invest via a user friendly platform and receive daily interest payments (6.75% annually). And best of all, you can withdraw all your funds at any given time.

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 € 16.46 last month, and my average return rate is now 9.3%.

A new project was added to Crowdestate last month, with an interest rate of 13.5% and an investment term of 2 years. Normally I try to invest in projects and loans with a shorter term. A while back I invested 100 euros of received interest in a project with a rate of 11%, and it still had 5 more months remaining. So I decided to try to sell this loan as an experiment.

It is easy to put a loan up for sale on the secondary market. A simple push of a buton, and you can enter your asking price. It immediately shows you your return rate, plus the expected return rate for the buyer. After all, you have to make it a bit interesting for buyers of course.

I set my asking price a bit higher than the actual value, so I would make a small profit if it was actually sold. There was nothing to lose, if nobody would buy the loan it would still give me the original 11% return rate. I was happy to see it was sold in a few days, and I received this email:

The sale resulted in a return rate of 11.7%, slightly higher than the original 11%, so that was really nice! I immediately re-invested it in that new project with the interest rate of 13.5%. So the next 5 months that money will return an unexpected extra 2.5%.

Crowdestor

My investments at Crowdestor returned € 66.53 last month, and my average return rate is now 9.5%.

I was in Riga last month, so I decided to take this opportunity and have a look at one of the projects I recently invested in:

The buildings are in the center of Riga, but not near old town. The weather was great, it was a nice half hour walk. The address is Artilērijas iela 26, and you can combine it with a visit to brewery and pub Labietis (if you happen to be in the neighbourhood).

Here you can not only see my photo of the buildings, but also me making that same photo:

Walking around the city you see a lot of buildings that are already renovated, but also a lot more buildings that are in need of renovating. From the old historical town center a large road runs through the city, and the project buildings are in a side street. The large street has been nicely renovated and a tram takes you to the historical center in minutes, so the area is easy to reach via public transportation. I think a lot more buildings will be renovated in this area in the near future, so the area has great potential. Here is an up close photo of the buildings:

The last week of June I received the first interest payment for this project (€ 36.20). The interest for the first 6 months will be payed in december, so this first payment is the interest for the period between the moment I invested and the moment the project is fully funded and started.

Envestio

My investments at Envestio returned € 186.90 last month, and my average return rate is now 18.9%.

And then Envestio.. I spoke to them on a conference in Riga last month, and expressed my concerns with the low availability of projects. They told me new projects would arrive within 1 or 2 weeks and they were starting a collaboration with another company which would result in more projects on the Envestio platform.

That was almost a month ago, and not a single project was added in June. So clearly the problem hasn’t been solved yet. It also means I cannot reinvest my funds, and my return rate is slowly going down. It is still the highest though, so no real reason for concern. I am not sure whether I will be in time to invest in the next project when it becomes available, as there are now a lot of investors waiting to invest. And the last project was already fully funded within 15 minutes after I received the email that announced the project.

I had over 3,000 euros of uninvested funds at Envestio, and then I saw a nice project that was added to Crowdestor. So I moved 2,500 euros from Envestio to Crowdestor. You can only withdraw funds when you have gone through the KYC process (Know Your Customer), which is required by European anti-laundering laws. I didn’t do that yet, so there was a delay that could have been avoided. So it is best to go through the KYC immediately after you have deposited funds, and that applies to every platform. After that the withdrawal went smoothly: the funds were in my own back account the next day.

If you still want to give it a try you can register via this link and 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

My investments at EstateGuru returned € 9.77 last month, and my average return rate is now 8.0%.

EstateGuru is now cooperating with the LHV Bank from Estonia. Customers of that bank can now see their EstateGuru investments and investment portfolio overview in their internet banking website. This is a nice development, traditional banks and newFinTech platforms working together. I think it is a sign of a more mature market.

EstateGuru also announced they received the backing of a large investment fund, Speedinvest f. They did not disclose the total amountbut did say they will use it to expand their platform to more territories. The platform is now active in Finland, Latvia, and Lithuania, and the proceeds will be used to launch operations in Spain and Italy.

Fast Invest

My investments at Fast Invest returned € 126.11 last month, and my average return rate is now 13.8%.

The auto-invest of Fast Invest now seems to be working as explained by the platform. Unfortunately. At first it also re-invested the interest I received, but Fast Invest explained that was not intended. I disagree with that, I want it to invest as much as possible in order to maximize returns… I asked them to at least make this an option, which they forwarded to the development team. Let’s hope this will be implemented soon. Now you have to login and re-invest the interest manually from time to time. I did that this month, 110 euros in a loan with 13% interest.

Funding Circle

My investments at Funding Circle returned € 44.18 last month, and my average return rate is now 8.5%.

Funding Circle is a platform that has been around since 2010. Besides in the Netherlands, it also operates in the UK, Germany, Canada, and the USA. I invest through the Dutch site, so I do not have any experience with Funding Circle in those other countries.

Grupeer

My investments at Grupeer returned € 86.32 last month, and my average return rate is now 14.8%.

I visited the office of Grupeer last month, but I was quite busy so I will post the report of my visit in the next week or so.

2 new loan originators have been added to Grupeer. Credito is based in Estonia, despite the Italian name. Their loans have an investment term of a year, and interest rates of 12%.

The other new loan originator is from Poland: Pozyczka Pieniedzy. They offer pay-day loans from 70-700 euros with an interest rate of 13%. There is a cashback action until July 17th: invest in loans from this loan originator and receive an immediate cashbackbonus of 1%.

Iuvo

My investments at Iuvo returned € 116.88 last month, and my average return rate remained 13.2%.

A new peak in the history of Iuvo, they have now reached over 60 million euros in investments. This is an increase of 400% compared to same time last year. They now have over 12,000 investors from over 120 countries. On average, each investor has deposited 5,000 euros, and 10% of the investors have deposited over 10,000 euros.

I do have a tip when you invest via the auto-invest: it is pauzed automatically everytime you edit it. You have to remember to activate it or the received principal and interest will not be re-invested. I updated my portfolio on June 3rd and noticed it wasn’t activated some 10 days later..

Kuetzal

My investments at Kuetzal returned € 33.68 last month, and my average return rate is now 14.3%.

I visited Kuetzal last month too, and I will post a report in the next few days.

A new project opened at Kuetzal: Alborg Petrol. The investment term is 24 months, but it does not have buyback guarantee. The interest rate is very interesting though: 20.5%. Other than that, nothing exciting happened. The shortest project I invested in has an investment term of a year, so the first time a project finishes and the principal will be repaid is scheduled for april next year. Until that time I will only receive interest payments, and those have been punctual so far.

When you register via this link you’ll receive a 0,5% cashback bonus over all your investments in the first 180 days.

Enter the promo code FINANCIELEVRIJHEID when you register, and you’ll get a bonus of 15 euros (this is the promo code for the Dutch version of my blog).

Lender & Spender

My investments at Lender & Spender returned € 12.82 last month, and my average return rate remains 3.9%.

Lender & Spender is a Dutch only platform, which started in 2016. Recently the 1,000th loan was funded which brings the total amount of funded consumer loans to 7 million euros.

Mintos

My investments at Mintos returned € 50.01 last month, and my average return rate is now 10.1%.

4 loan originators left Mintos last month. Each loan originator has fulfilled all of their obligations towards the investors by repurchasing all outstanding loans. InviPay was launched on Mintos in February 2018 and offered loans from Poland. Mintos terminated the agreement with InviPay due to a decline in the financial condition of InviPay.

The parent company of GetBucks Poland decided to stop with European loan activities and focus solely on the African market. PimPay joined Mintos in 2017 and now left because they’re restructuring the company. They expect to join the platform again after that. ID Finance Georgia (Solva LLC) no longer offers their Georgian loans, as the paret company decided to focus on loans issued in Spain, Mexico, and Kazachstan.

It is natural that there aren’t just loan originators joining the platform, but also loan originators leaving. It’s good to see that Mintos is now proactively removing originators from the platform when they are starting to perform worse, this helps to keep the platform healthy and minimizes the risks for investors.

Last month I had a chance to briefly visit the office of Mintos, for a quick tour. Here you can see the development team:

The Product Owner and designer of their mobile app showed the designs thay have so far. They haven’t started coding yet, they are still working on the design so it may take a while before the mobile app will be launched. Here are some of the screens, the quality is not that great because I photographed the monitor:

Mintos also announced they are applying for a European e-money license. They hope to get it this year, so they can issue IBAN bank accounts to investors. This makes it possible to directly deposit funds to the account, even your salary. They also intend to issue debit bank cards so you can use the same account for both investing and your daily grocery shopping.

When you register via this link you’ll receive a 1% cashback bonus over all your investments in the first 90 days.

TFG Crowd

One of the new platforms in the market is TFG Crowd. I decided to invest it it as an experiment, to see how this newcomer will evolve. I haven’t received any interest yet, so I expect to tell a bit more next month.

Twino

My investments at Twino returned € 44.15 last month, and my average return rate remained 10.6%.

I visited Twino last month too, and I will post a report in the next few days.

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.

When you found this update interesting, consider hitting the Like button. Feel free to share it with your friends using the buttons below.

Below you can also find the link to my previous posts, where you can find my tips and results of the previous months.