Today Isepankur launched the possibility for lenders to sell and buy loan (parts) on a secondary marketplace. Lenders can list the loans they want to sell at the secondary marketplace and set a price which either is equal to the outstanding principal or apply a premium (up to 5%) or a discount to that. The fee Isepankur charges if a transaction closes is 1.5% (each) from seller and buyer.
I talked about the advantages a secondary market offers in p2p lending before. Most major marketplace have added the possibility to sell or buy loans. The latest to introduce this feature was Ratesetter.
In the past weeks Isepankur also introduced borrower groups (A, B and C), which group loan applications by discretionary income. Combined with the credit history classification already used (600-1000) loan applications are now classified by a combination of both (e.g. A800).
When p2p lending service Isepankur opened up to investors from all EU countries five month ago, I started lending there. In this post I continue the series of posts reviewing the development of my loan portfolio. I have deposited 6,000 Euro (approx. 7,800 US$) since starting. The account currently has 126 Euro in cash, 70 Euro waiting in bids on loans to close and 6,550 Euro is invested in loans. So far I was repaid 476 Euro principal and received 271 Euro interest.
Chart 1: Screenshot of account balance
Distribution of loans on credit grade ranges
My investment is spread out over about 350 loan parts (a bit less loans as sometimes I have 2 or 3 bids in one loan). 5,435 Euro (83%) is invested in top credit grade (“1000”) loans. 780 Euro (12%) in “900” grade loans. And the remainder are experimental bids in “600”-“800” grade loans. Continue reading →
Two month ago, when p2p lending service Isepankur opened up to investors from all EU countries, I started lending there. In this post I look at the status of the portfolio I have built so far.
I have deposited 4,000 Euro (approx. 5,200 US$) over the past weeks. The account currently has 254 Euro in cash, 215 Euro waiting in bids on loans to close and the majority of 3,580 Euro is invested in loans. I invested usually between 10 and 35 Euro per loan. The average interest rate of the loans is 25% and loan terms are between 1 and 36 months with most loans running for 24 months or longer. Most of the investments were done using the automatic bidding feature: About two thirds of the loans are fully funded by automatic bids the minute they appear on the marketplace. It is therefore necessary to use the automatic bidding, or these loans will be missed investment opportunities.
Screenshot of Account Overview
Repayments
So far nearly all repayments came on time. Of the few who missed a payment date, all but two repaid the next day. Currently only one loan (10 Euro) of my portfolio is a few days overdue. One loan was fully repaid early after only one month. In December I have scheduled repayments of 149 Euro which consist of 91 Euro principal and 58 Euro interest. In January – with more loans reaching first repayment date – repayments will rise to over 250 Euro. Isepankur offers monthly and daily charts forecasting cash flow.
Screenshot of Isepankur cashflow view for my portfolio showing payment dates and amounts in December
Statistics
The portfolio management has a statistics section that daily calculates the return on investment. Continue reading →
Recently, p2p lending service Isepankur opened to international lenders. Residents from any European Union country and Switzerland can now sign up and start investing. There are no fees for lenders. I wanted to gain first hand experience as soon as possible so I signed up immediately and now share the process.
Getting started – Registration
Registration takes place completely online. First click on ‘Join for free’ and choose a username and a password. Isepankur now sends an verification email. After confirming that, there is a form where the personal details are entered. Also choose between confirming bids via password or mobile ID.
Depositing funds
Depositing funds is done via SEPA bank transfer. For transfers done in Euro this does cost the same bank fee as a domestic bank transfer – in my case it was free. I transferred 1,000 Euro in and the amount was credited to my account the next day. Before investing is possible, Isepankur needs to confirm the identity of the lender. That was completed the same day the money arrived, and I was ready to start investing.
First investment
Isepankur uses an auction model, where individual p2p loan applications are listed. Lenders can either manually bid or use investment profiles for automatic bidding. Under ‘Invest’, ‘Investment Opportunities’ is the list of open loan auction. There are two different types: those that close immediately once 100% funded and those that continue to run until the auction time ends with investors underbidding each other’s interest rates once 100% funding is reached.
By clicking on a loan listing, the detail information can be reviewed. Isepankur only allows fully employed borrowers on the marketplace and checks their income and credit history.
Sample of the detail information on the loan application. Lists age, type of employment, length of employment, education level and home ownership.
Sample of the detail information on the loan application. The borrower has an income of 775 Euro and existing liabilities of 165 Euro per month. Continue reading →
The Estonian p2p lending service Isepankur recently opened up to international lenders. Anyone with a bank account in the European Union or Switzerland can now start lending at Isepankur. Borrowing is still restricted to residents and businesses in Estonia (due to regulation reasons). I expected cross-border lending to be happening in peer to peer lending as early as 2008 (see my predictions). As it turned out it took 4 more years since my blog post for cross border lending to happen.
Isepankur is in operation since 2009 and has a good performance track record since.
Screenshot from the statistics section. The realised returns (after bad debt) show that most of those investors, who lent more than 5,000 Euro, fall into the range of 10 to 20% p.a.
Advantages and disadvantages for (international) lenders:
no lender fees
higher interest rate level in Estonia (compared to other European markets)
fast money transfer (SEPA bank transfers usually take only one working day and do not cost more than national transfers) – therefore getting money in and out is fast
lots of information about the borrowers (employment&income verification, information on other existing debts of borrower)
low bad debt in relation to interest rates
low minimum bid allows wide diversification
stringent debt recovery process
detailed statistics (>2 years track record) and account performance overview
high security standards
not that many loan listings. It takes lenders some time to built a large portfolio
Advantages and disadvantages for borrowers:
application can be completed totally online (no paperwork, borrowers even submit bank account records digitally)
moderate fees
fast funding with short auction duration; money accessible within two hours of auction (successfully) closing
currently the interest level is very high; this might get better if Isepankur succeeds in getting more lenders
I will publish an in depth review article showing step by step how I tested investing at Isepankur. Look out for this article containing screenshots showing the features and interface in the next days on this blog.
This post reviews a selection of p2p lending companies and does a rating on more factors than just loan volume. While I describe below what factors led to my rating, please note that the rating represents my personal opinion.
The table lists the companies in alphabetical order and gives:
New loan volume per month
This amount is in all cases but Zopa retrieved from the company websites and represents loans funded from Feb. 16th till March 15th 2012, and then converted into US$ at today’s currency exchange rates.
Brand/Press
Extend and tone of press coverage in the past months. Since a large share of new users is introduced to p2p lending services via media, positive media coverage is extremely important. Continued positive media coverage has helped some companies to associate positive values to their brand.
Growth/Marketing
This column especially rates if the new loan volume is growing continuously month after month. Furthermore it puts the absolute volume into perspective to the size of the market. It is obvious that absolute numbers in a country with a small population (e.g. Estonia) will be much lower than those in a country with a large population (e.g. US). Furthermore it takes into account if the (online) marketing measures of the the company succeed in winning new borrowers and lenders (though in most markets lenders do not need to be actively acquired).
Sustainability
Sustainability rates a mix of several factors:
ROIs for lenders / default rates Most p2p lending companies that failed in the past, did so as a result of high default rates which led to negative lender ROIs and caused massive lender churn
Ability of company to raise new funding Most p2p lending companies still have to bridge a considerable time-span at their current growth rate before they become cash flow positive. The ability to raise more funding to finance continued operation is essential for their success. Isepankur announced that it operated profitable in 2011.
Business model
User satisfaction
This rates the publicly voiced user opinion. Major factor are the comments in forums. To a lesser degree I took the user experience published in blog articles into account. The problem with lender experiences published in blogs often is that the writer is casting a positive image, since he earns commissions for newly referred customers through the affiliate program of the p2p lending site. Also these review are often written at the start of the lending activity at which point the lender’s ROI is naturally unharmed by the experience of defaults.
*estimate Empty fields: I had not enough information to rate these. E.g. with some of the new UK p2p lending companies I felt I had too few indicators to reach an opinion.
Availability of information also influenced the selection of companies. Due to language barriers including more services (e.g. the Japanese p2p lending companies) was not feasible for me.
Developments since last year
UK and US markets show impressive growth. A few smaller players stopped funding new p2p loans (Quakle, CommunityLend, BigCarrots). German services are struggling to achieve growth (Auxmoney had 2 good months lately).
