August 2021: Rise of the Licenses

This month there is good news for investors. The largest P2P platform in Europe has obtained the licenses for investment firm and electronic money institute. You can read more about this further on.

More platforms are in the process of acquiring licenses, and that is only to be welcomed. Due to the strict rules, the platforms have to make significant changes and that takes a lot of time. Processes must be stricter, funds must be better shielded, more checks by the financial supervisors, and platforms must also provide more transparency. All things that are very good for investors.

It is of course not the case that you can just do something when investing via a platform with a license and expect it to be as safe as a savings account, there are always risks associated with investing. But hey, that’s why the interest rates are a lot higher. Otherwise we would have just put money in a savings account, but nowadays you almost have to pay for that..

There are now only a few licensed platforms, but I expect more and more in the coming months. On my overview page with platforms I will add a column to indicate which platforms have a license. I think the coming year will be interesting, because then hopefully most platforms will get a license or be working on this. Platforms that do not yet have a license will be scrutinized, I think. A license does not guarantee reliability, but not having a license will increasingly become a negative signal for investors. If that is the case, then it is important to remove your money from those platforms in time. In short, exciting times are coming.

Portfolio overview August 2021

Last month my portfolio increased by € 973.46 and my average rate of return over all platforms is 12.7%. The table below shows the details for each category.

Passive income per month

The extreme highs and lows on the stock market prevent me from adequately determine the passive income that my investments can generate when I stop working. That is why I now calculate the 6-month moving average of my passive income.

You can find my definition of passive income on my portfolio page.

Activities

To show you how little effort is involved when investing 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.

Crowdlending

Crowdlending (west)

 Flender

Flender continues to run fine. They have no buyback guarantee, but the percentage of problem loans is very low even in the corona crisis. Of the more than 3000 euros, only about 150 euros in loans are behind with payments. About 38 euros has been written off, but since I have already received about 350 euros in interest/profit, that is more than compensated. And investing via a Western European platform, from Ireland in this case, does feel closer to home.

My investments at Flender returned € 22.14 last month, and my average return rate is now 7.0%.

 Funding Circle NL

My investments at Funding Circle NL returned € 7.46 last month, and my average return rate is now 8.7%. Retail investors cannot invest in new loans here anymore, so my account value and interest received are less and less each month.

 Lender & Spender

Even though the return on Lender & Spender is a bit lower than on other platforms, I’m glad I was one of the first to add it to my portfolio. It is a Dutch platform, and it works very conservatively: your money is automatically spread over a huge number of loans. In my opinion, this is one of the safest platforms I invest in. And then I like to take a lower return, it is still much better higher if you compare it with a savings account.

My investments at Lender & Spender returned € 10.53 last month, and my average return rate is now 3.8%.

 Max Crowdfund

At the beginning of this month I had set an alarm because a project became available at Max Crowdfund. Because of this I was there on time, because the project was fully funded within 6 minutes:

A week ago another project came live and this time it took 34 minutes to fill. There are more projects to come, and luckily it seems to be getting easier to get there on time.

My investments at Max Crowdfund returned € 4.53 last month, and my average return rate is now 2.0%.

Crowdlending (east)

 Bondora

Bondora‘s public statistics page shows that the net return of their portfolio has decreased slightly again, by 0.1 percentage point to 7.9%. When I started tracking it in February it was still 8.8%, and I started tracking it because I think it was still above 9% at the end of last year. Of course this is still above the max 6.75% that you get at Bondora Go&Gro so there is still a margin for them, but it is getting smaller and smaller. Hopefully the decrease is due to the corona crisis and it will rise again, if it comes close to 6.75% then I expect that the interest paid at the Go&Grow will also fall. Anyway, that can go down a long way before it comes close to a savings account and your money can in principle be freely withdrawn at any time.

Last year Bondora made a profit of 3.4 million euros on a turnover of 21.4 million euros, so it doesn’t seem to be going too badly for them. The number of investors here also continues to grow considerably: they now report as many as 170,000 investors.

My investments at Bondora returned € 19.50 last month, and my average return rate is now 6.8%.

 Brickstarter

At Brickstarter my return is slowly climbing and has now reached 5% for the first time. On average, a project comes along here every month, so I hope to be able to invest the now available 178 euros soon.

My investments at Brickstarter returned € 9.10 last month, and my average return rate is now 5.0%.

 Bulkestate

I am a fan of platforms where you invest in real estate projects. A loan secured by a mortgage on real estate means a little more than a promise from a company that they guarantee a loan. I’ve been investing through Bulkestate for two years now and things are going quite well, although some things could be improved. Updates about projects are usually posted in the forum, I prefer to see that by email. Now you have to log in yourself every now and then to stay informed. Most updates are for projects that have backlogs or other issues, which I’d rather not miss. Fortunately, the returns have been good so far.

My investments at Bulkestate returned € 10.83 last month, and my average return rate is now 11.2%.

 Crowdestate

Crowdestate is one of the few platforms that has a license, they were licensed as a Payment Institution in June. In terms of statistics and overviews, I think they are in the top in terms of transparency, they post an extensive overview on their blog every month. They also have an extensive statistics page where you can even download a CSV or Excel file with the projects that are behind or in default.

My investments at Crowdestate returned € 3.95 last month, and my average return rate is now 9.7%.

 Crowdestor

Crowdestor already had the auto-invest for the primary market, now you can add an auto-invest for the secondary market as well. You can create and prioritize different strategies, or even specify specific loan numbers if you are interested in a particular project.

Personally, I think the projects here and the platform itself are high risk. I did invest a bit through the new Crowdestor Flex option recently, but that was just to try it out. This Flex product is comparable to Bondora Go&Grow, in principle your money can be withdrawn at any time. That’s a lot safer than locking it up here for months. Crowdestor Flex offers a fixed interest rate of 12%, Bondora Go&Grow offers up to 6.75% interest. Both pay the interest not monthly but daily. However, it doesn’t do much for you right now, because Flex is so popular that Crowdestor can’t handle it and has introduced a stop.

Below you can see that Crowdestor has projects that promise extremely high interest rates. However, keep in mind that the associated risks are much higher. For example, the hostel renovation project was first financed through another platform, but had to be refinanced due to financial problems.

Because of these kinds of projects and other signals, I increasingly see Crowdestor as a platform with a very high risk. My priority here is to wind down and always withdraw the money that has become available. This month I received the full repayment of the Timberland project. Two years ago I invested 1500 euros in it, while the original term would only be one year. Fortunately, I received 427 euros in interest in those two years, so in the end it was all not too bad. I have withdrawn the full amount. I want to get my entire investment out of this platform as soon as possible and only leave a small amount to be able to continue following this platform until it is clear which way it is going.

My investments at Crowdestor returned € 40.64 last month, and my average return rate is now 16.5%.

 EstateGuru

Of the 407 million euros in loans that have been financed through EstateGuru since 2014, 237 million have been repaid and 170 million euros are still outstanding. Of these, 92 outstanding loans are currently in default, representing 8.6% of the outstanding amount. EstateGuru has managed to recover 70 projects that were in default, although that takes about 8 months per project. They do that quite well, they also manage to collect part of the interest, so that investors still made about 10% return on those loans.

My investments at EstateGuru returned € 14.01 last month, and my average return rate is now 10.0%.

 EvoEstate

This month EvoEstate added another 10 projects. Of these, 4 were in Austria, 3 in Lithuania, 2 in Norway, and 1 in Ireland. This time there were no ‘skin in the game’ projects.

EvoEstate is an “aggregator platform”, which means that they do not fund projects themselves, but publish projects from other affiliated platforms. Via EvoEstate you can then (automatically) invest in projects from those other platforms without having to create an account or deposit money there. EvoEstate takes care of everything for you, so you can quickly spread it over different platforms. Of course everything goes through that one platform: EvoEstate.

I’m curious what EvoEstate will do as more platforms get a license. Can they qualify for a license themselves? Are they going to select the affiliated platforms based on having a license? Time will tell.

My investments at EvoEstate returned € 5.98 last month, and my average return rate is now 5.6%.

 Fast Invest

At Fast Invest it remains bad in terms of payouts. So I would certainly not deposit money here until it is clear whether and when investors can have their money transferred to their own account again.

My investments at Fast Invest returned € 1.85 last month, and my average return rate is now 12.4%.

 Grupeer

Grupeer’s website remains active, but nothing else happens and investors still can’t access their money. So don’t even come close as an investor.

Last month my account value at Grupeer did not change, and my average return rate is now 7.1%.

 Iuvo

Lender Easy Credit has introduced so-called “Super Easy” loans on Iuvo. The interest rate is much lower, at 4.8% to 5.12%, and with terms of 6 and 12 months. They do come with a buyback guarantee that also covers the accrued interest and that is activated after 3 days. The risk class A also provides more security.

They compensate for the lower interest rate with increased liquidity: if you want to withdraw your money in the meantime, you can offer them for sale on the secondary market, and if you give a discount of 0.5%, Easy Credit will guarantee them within three working days from you. repurchase. That half percent lowers your return, of course, but I think that being able to transfer your money to your own bank account within a few days is worth more.

The biggest disadvantage of Iuvo, I think, is that the auto-invest invests in the first loans and does not ensure a nice spread over the different lenders. As a result, all my investments ended up with the problematic CBC. I think if you invest manually or get a lender out of your auto-invest if the stock gets too high, you’ll probably get a good return. Let us know if that is the case for you, if you invest here too..

Last month my account value at Iuvo did not change, and my average return rate is now 8.1%.

 Mintos

This month there is good news for Mintos again: they have received the EMI license, Electronic Money Institution, as well as the investment firm license. Mintos is by far the biggest P2P platform in Europe, with a market share of almost 44%.

And this is actually even better news for investors. Mintos is now a regulated platform and supervised by the FCMC (Financial and Capital Market Commission, the Latvian Financial Markets Authority). This includes increased transparency and also more protection for investors. The loans you can currently invest in are so-called claim rights, and these loans will be converted into regulated financial ‘notes’. In contrast to the loans, the notes fall under the national investor compensation scheme due to European rules. Due to European rules, every country is obliged to compensate investors’ funds up to 20,000 euros via this system in case the platform cannot meet its obligations.

The license also allows Mintos to offer other investment opportunities, such as ETFs. I expect there will be news about this in the coming months.

My investments at Mintos returned € 45.59 last month, and my average return rate is now 10.2%.

 NEO Finance

My investments at NEO Finance returned € 17.08 last month, and my average return rate is now 2.3%.

 PeerBerry

PeerBerry‘s loan portfolio has surpassed $60 million per month for the first time, and the number of investors has grown to just over 40,000. If you look at the total of outstanding loans, you will see a significant dip in the first months of 2020 due to the corona crisis. But as you can see, that has been more than made up for since then.

PeerBerry is growing so much that they are now the 5th platform in Europe in terms of market share, but if you look at the amount funded in the past month, they are even in 2nd place.

Most of the loans are financed through the Aventus Group, and that is also going well: in the first half of this year a net profit of 13 million euros was realized. If such profits are made even in these times it seems to me that they also have no problem fulfilling the buyback guarantees if necessary. If a loan is more than 60 days late, you as an investor get your money back, and even with the accrued interest. Then you invest with a somewhat safer feeling.

Even better news is that PeerBerry hopes to receive their crowdlending license before the end of October, which will also be valid across the EU from November 10.

My investments at PeerBerry returned € 9.03 last month, and my average return rate is now 10.5%.

 Reinvest24

Eight projects became available on Reinvest24 in August, although most of them are loans for real estate development. Only 1 project involved the purchase of a property to rent out and increase its value. In the beginning this was the only kind of projects on this platform, nowadays they also have ‘normal’ loans with real estate as collateral.

The returns here continue to increase slowly and are now almost at 6% here, so that indicates that the 1% cost per investment are compensated fairly quickly. Still, I’d rather see some more “rental projects” here that focus on rental income and ultimately some nice value growth, because that makes the platform a bit distinctive. Brickstarter also has these kinds of projects, but there aren’t many other platforms like this.

My investments at Reinvest24 returned € 16.86 last month, and my average return rate is now 5.8%.

 Robocash

It’s going well with Robocash. In the past month alone, more than 13 million euros in loans have been funded, and the number of investors has grown to more than 18,000. Net profit in the first half of this year increased by 33% compared to the first half of 2020.

Compared to last year, the platform has grown by no less than 78%. Out of approximately 50 platforms in Europe, RoboCash is now in 10th place in terms of market share.

My investments at Robocash returned € 11.67 last month, and my average return rate is now 12.3%.

 TFG Crowd

This month, while logging into TFG Crowd, I received three calls to agree or not to take steps to declare a borrower bankrupt: Unideal, Leks Group, and Fivo Capital. So no more coffee, i guess…

Of the projects I have invested in here, 15 have been successfully completed, and 9 are still open. Only 5 out of 9 are ‘in recovery’, so in serious trouble, and 3 are 31-60 days behind on payments. Then only 1 project out of 9 would be running normally. So not a good score..

It could very well be that TFG Crowd is on its last legs. As you may have read before, I am not a fan of this platform, and if you see how things are going now, I can only conclude that it is better to avoid or leave this platform.

Last month my account value at TFG Crowd did not change, and my average return rate is now 15.7%.

 TWINO

TWINO has just published the financial reports for 2020. Compared to the previous year, the group’s consolidated net profit increased by 28% to 7.4 million euros, on a turnover of 61.6 million euros.

The annual figures do show that the situation has deteriorated compared to 2019, the liquidity ratio has decreased from 0.90 to 0.45 (this figure indicates the extent to which a company can meet short-term obligations). According to TWINO, however, this is under control, because in the second half of 2021 the payments from the subsidiaries will be received and this will be rectified again.

TWINO has completed all the preparatory work to obtain their license, such as restructuring the group itself, and it seems that they have already received positive feedback. They hope to receive the license sometime in the next few weeks, so maybe I can include that (good) news in my next month’s update. Once they are licensed and regulated, I expect the financial picture to become clearer and better. But the fact that the group is even profitable as a whole at this time is of course a good sign.

My investments at TWINO returned € 16.53 last month, and my average return rate is now 9.7%.

 Viainvest

Viainvest is also busy getting the IBF license (Investment Brokerage Firm). One of Viainvest’s strengths is that it is part of a large group: the VIA SMS Group does not only include the P2P platform Viainvest, but also the affiliated originators. Everything under 1 umbrella, with the corresponding control and insights.

My investments at Viainvest returned € 22.91 last month, and my average return rate is now 11.9%.

Crowdfunding

 CrowdAboutNow

At CrowdAboutNow there are still no stock campaigns. But I still enjoy my share in Beer in a Box, the beer packages come in regularly. They also taste great, and you never get the same beer twice with a subscription. And who wouldn’t want to be surprised with delicious beers every month or two.. Don’t like all types of beers? No problem, you can be completely surprised or select which beer styles you do like (okay, sounds like advertising but I am also a little bit shareholder/owner 🙂 ).

Last month my account value at CrowdAboutNow did not change, and my average return rate is still 0.0%.

 Crowdcube

Last month my account value at Crowdcube did not change, and my average return rate is still 0.0%.

 Seedrs

When collecting my figures, I was first surprised and then pleasantly surprised. I first had to see why my account with Seedrs had suddenly become worth a lot more, but then I saw that the valuation of my share in EstateGuru had been adjusted. Nice to be so surprised!

My Seedrs portfolio increased in value by € 1,047.84 last month, and my average return rate is now 10.5%.

Stock

 DEGIRO

At the beginning of this month I cashed in my winnings on Fortinet and Crowdstrike at DEGIRO. I bought Fortinet exactly a year ago at $130 each and now sold them for $290.

In June of last year I had bought 20 pieces of Crowdstrike Holdings at a price of 96 dollars. By April I had already sold half to cash in on some profit, now I’ve sold the rest for $260 each.

I do think that digital security is still a big growth market, I also have a number of ‘digital security’ ETF (iShares Digital Security UCITS ETF USD Acc). With this, your investment is actually automatically spread over dozens of companies in this sector. And the price (currently € 6.70) is so low that it is also really interesting for investors who want to start/invest with small amounts.

My investments at DEGIRO returned € 596.23 last month, and my average return rate is now 40.1%.

 ING

At ING I added another 100 euros and bought 3 pieces of Physical Silver ETF and 1 MSCI World ETF. Since the rebalancing, my economy/metals ratio is now 49.9%/50.1%. I try to invest exactly the same amount in each ‘category’. If you look at the current value, the ratio is now 52%/48%.

That is of course due to price movements, and in the long run that is not really a problem due to the principle of “cost averaging”. If the price of a stock or ETF rises it is more expensive to buy one, but on the other hand the value of that stock in your portfolio has also increased. If the price of for instance the ‘metal ETF’ falls your existing investment in it decreases in value, but on the other hand you can also buy some more cheaply. In the long run those pro’s and con’s sort of balance each other out.

My investments at ING returned € 162.12 last month, and my average return rate is now 15.0%.

 Saxo Bank

A year ago I bought 5 ASML shares through Saxo Bank, which was then still Binck Bank, at a price of 328 euros each. Because I wanted to cash in part of my winnings, I have now sold 3 of them. The price has risen so much that I was able to sell them for €711.70 each. So now not only have I made a profit of €479, but I also have two ASML shares left that are completely free and also pure profit. A friend tipped me that strategy, and since then I usually sell half of a purchase when it doubles in price. With cryptos and now also with shares. Being able to withdraw your invested money from somewhere and continue investing with pure profit is very soothing, from that moment on it is actually no longer your own money that is at risk…

Last month my account value at Saxo Bank decreased by € 1,122.92, and my average return rate is now 90.9%.

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. You can find my previous posts here: my tips, warnings, results of the previous months, and other articles.

Disclaimer: I share my experiences on this site, and blog about my results and things I encounter. It is for informational purposes only and cannot be considered professional advice. Investments bring risk and you should never invest funds that you are not willing to lose. I think my site is a nice start, but do your own research and make sure you understand the risks before you start to invest yourself. You can read more about this here.