Spain

Interview with Andris Rozenbahs, COO of Viventor

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What is Viventor about?

Viventor is about providing sensible investment opportunities for investors from all over Europe. As we started considering the idea of Viventor less than a year ago, peer-to-peer financing was achieving remarkable success in the US and the UK. In contrary, the “old continent” was relatively underserved.

And so the goal was set – to build a peer-to-peer lending platform for European investors that is accessible, makes investing convenient, and offers high quality services, investment opportunities, and the product itself.

What are the three main advantages for investors?

Firstly, it is the investments themselves. All loans currently offered are secured by liquid real estate mortgages, as well as come with Buyback Guarantee. The weighted-average LTV ratio of our loan book is 28.45%, and we are proud to be the market leaders in terms of providing such low-risk opportunities.

Secondly, the investors receive fixed monthly interest payments. Relatively few platforms do this, but we see it as an advantage for the investors. Instead of diminishing interest and trying to crack advanced formulas, we offer straightforward logics and exactly the same payments every month. We want to make investing convenient also for people relatively unfamiliar with the world of finance and peer-to-peer lending.

Thirdly, it is the simplicity and convenience of investing. We are constantly making efforts towards removing the friction from the investment process itself by building the platform and its UI simple and intuitive for any user. Improvements based on everyday findings are constantly implemented, new languages are added, and educational material is made available. Our aim is to for investing to be simple and enjoyable.

What are the three main advantages for borrowers?

Viventor does not originate loans itself, and this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

However, if we speak about the partner companies that have currently listed their loans on Viventor, there are a couple of things worth noting. The companies consist of professionals, possessing years of experience in non-bank lending and underwriting, and having their skin completely in the game. Also, access to financing for eligible borrowers is considerably faster than that offered by alternative creditors. This has been achieved by combining years of experience and knowledge with machine learning and other modern technologies.

Andris RozenbahsWhat ROI can investors expect?

Currently, investors can earn up to 7% p.a. fixed, and there are no fees withheld. The number will be going up though, as we will be adding other types of loans with higher levels of interest.

Prestamos Prima, the mother company of Viventor, operates in Spain? What led to the decision to incorporate Viventor SIA in Latvia?

We as professionals have been in the non-bank lending for many years, involved in other projects before Prestamos Prima. While Spain is one of the major markets at the moment, it is certainly not the only one, and you can expect loans from other European countries being added.

What concerns Viventor being incorporated in Latvia – we are Latvians, and prefer to stick to our origins whenever we are able to choose. There is a lot of untapped potential and hidden talent in the Baltics, but then again – I believe people familiar with the European peer-to-peer financing market are well aware of that already.

Is the technical platform self-developed?

Yes, Viventor has been built in-house from the very first line of code, and we will keep the development of platform to ourselves. All in all, we believe the right approach for improving Viventor is by gathering feedback, applying our lessons learnt, constantly pivoting and optimising. And it is clearly much more efficient to achieve this with a dedicated engineering team in-house. Continue reading →

Interview with Sergio Antón, Co-Founder of MytripleA

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What is MytripleA about?

MytripleA is the first and only fully regulated platform operating in the Spanish market. MytripleA is a Spanish business finance platform meeting both short-term and medium-term financing needs of Spanish SMEs. MytripleA offers two different products: 1) insurance guaranteed loans -for more conservative investors- and non guaranteed loans -with higher risk and higher return- and 2) invoice financing.

What are the three main advantages for investors?

We offer an excellent risk-adjusted return to investors with a very robust underwriting process. Our investors receive monthly payments (except for invoice investments). In addition, we offer insurance loans (with close to zero risk) to more conservative investors. The abovementioned advantages and being the only fully regulated lending platform in Spain have allowed us to have a stable and growing investor base.

What are the three main advantages for borrowers?

Fast response to applicants. We are very flexible to adapt our financing to the borrower’ needs. In addition, our financing leaves no records in the Bank of Spain’s debt data base which makes it much more attractive than banking debt.

Sergio Anton, MytripleAWhat ROI can investors expect?

Our ROI in currently 8.30% with zero default rate.

How did you start MytripleA? Is the company funded with venture capital?

My cofounder and I noted that there are thousands of solvent SMEs ignored by the banks and decided to connect personal savings with solvent companies by using technology. We checked the regulatory issues and launched the company once we had obtained the necessary approvals. The company was initially funded by the founders and then we did our first round with GLI Finance and other private investors.

How valuable is it to have an experienced investor like GLI Finance? Can you please give examples how they help you in your business development?

GLI is the expert in the alternative finance sector for SMEs worldwide and is a key shareholder for MytripleA. They are supporting us in areas such us strategy, business development and the security of our platform. In addition, they also provide lending capacity for MytripleA. We are extremely happy to have them on-board. Continue reading →

Interview with Josep Nebot, Co-Founder of Arboribus

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What is Arboribus about?

Arboribus is the leading Spanish P2B lending platform that focus in more than 12 months loans for SMEs. Through our platform, High Net Worth individuals along with retail investors participate in directly lending to the most robust businesses in Spain obtaining a diversified portfolio with a net return around 7%.

What are the three main advantages for investors?

If I have to remark three advantages I would say a combination of a high net return along with a moderate risk and a total decorrelation from the financial markets: Returns from 5% to 7% when fix income securities or deposits returns are under 1%, with a moderate risk obtained by lending to the most creditworthy businesses in a very diversified way, and a total decorrelation from the ups and downs of the stock market. If I’m aloud to say a fourth advantage, I would pick “simplicity”.

What are the three main advantages for borrowers?

First, simplicity of the process of getting a loan: all on-line with a dedication from the business of no more than 15 minutes. Second, cost: for small businesses we are slightly cheaper than the funding obtained from traditional banks. And third, we permit the business to really diversify its funding sources and reduce risks of dependency from banks. That last advantage takes a special importance in Spain where SMEs have been traditionally dependent from banks for more than 90% of its external funding, a shocking figure if we look that of UK (30%) of France (50%).

Josep NebotWhat ROI can investors expect?

The actual weighted average interest rates on the platform is around 7%. Nevertheless, we expect to offer a 5% to 6% in a long term basis, net of fees and defaults.

How was Arboribus started? Is the company funded with venture capital?

Arboribus was founded by two friends (Carles and me). After one year of both dedicated full time to build the whole business, we got a first investment round and well after that we did the first crowdlending loan to a SME in Spain (that was July’13). Since there, we got two more investment rounds all covered by private investors (big business owners, bank managers and other business angels).

Is the technical platform self-developed?

Yes. We have in our team one programmer and almost the whole team is involved in improving our tools and developing new ones. Continue reading →

P2P Lending In Spain – The Current Situation

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This is a guest post by Josep Nebot, Co-founder and Representative Director of p2p lending platform Arboribus (full bio at the end of the article).

Good playing ground for P2P/P2B lending in Spain

Spain has 47 million inhabitants and regarding its real GDP is the 14th biggest economy in the World and the 5th of the European Union. To stablish a p2p / p2b lending platform, the size of an economy matters, but also the composition of its business structure, and Spain should be a perfect ground for the sector to grow. Here are two important variables:

  • 99% of businesses are SME’s (less than 250 employees), and 42.2% has less than 10 employees.
  • The bankarization of the Spanish economy is huge: Banks represent 85% of the SME’s external financing (being barely 30% in UK), and approximately 95% if we talk about small businesses.

Spain FlagThere are around 10 different active crowdlending platforms in Spain that totaled 13.7 million EUR in 2014. This is a very small figure compared to other countries, but it must be taken into account that most platforms don’t have more than 2 years of history and the growing rate has been huge (2.8 millions of origination in 2013) and the capital risen by these platforms is also much lower.

Specific P2P lending regulation should accelerate the growth rate

Last April 2015 the government issued a piece of legislation that specifically regulates P2P lending activities in Spain, ending a process of negotiation and hard work done by the regulators and most active platforms during more than 12 months.

The regulation will enter into force next march 2015 and I can conclude that it offers more positive than negative aspects in order to help grow the sector and offer legal security to investors, which is critical for everybody but especially for institutional or professional investors.

The law differentiates the figures of accredited and non-accredited investors, imposing a limitation to invest up to 10,000 EURO per year through p2p platforms for the s second ones. Although this limitation may appear too restrictive, in practice most of investors will easily go through the accreditation process enabling them to invest with no restriction at all. To be an accredited investor one needs to have annual income above 50K EUR or financial assets above 100K EUR, or to invest through a vehicle of certain characteristics or to assure receiving professional financial support. All professional or institutional investors, that internationally and also in Spain represent a great part of the investment volume, won’t have any restriction at all to invest and create their portfolio. Continue reading →

What does the Funding Circle / Zencap Deal Mean?

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The big news at LendIt conference this week in London was that Funding Circle announced the acquisition of German marketplace Zencap. Zencap launched in March 2014 and facilitated SME loans in Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. Working with local teams, the IT infrastructure is run from the headquarter in Berlin.

Samir Desai announcing the acquisition

Zencap has originated more than 35M EUR loans since launch with a monthly volume of 4-5M in the last months. The vast majority of this volume was generated in German loans.

With the acquisition Zencap will become Funding Circle Central Europe and the founders Matthias Knecht and Christian Grobe will head this division. Knecht confirmed that Funding Circle paid in stock through a stock swap. All existing investors stayed onboard. No details on the valuation were publicly available. Knecht said at Lendit that talks between Funding Circle and Zencap started as early as Lendit 2014.

Allegedly Zencap has been trying to raise a new round since May 2015 but struggeled. A source from the VC scene told me that he thinks, that Rocket Internet – the backer of Zencap – might have concluded, that it is more important to prove that Rocket Internet is able to deliver successful exits rather than close another round which might not meet high expectations of onlookers.

What does the deal mean for Funding Circle?

I feel that Funding Circle essentially invests in the future outlook. The current volumes of Zencap are solid but not spectacular. So essentially the deal enables Funding Circle to jump from serving two markets to five markets (even though NL and ES are very small so far) without starting from scratch. They also get local teams that are familiar with the markets and their circumstances.
For Funding Circle Central Europe it means easy access to a large base of institutional investors that are already familiar with the Funding Circle brand and can now diversify into SME loan markets in continental Europe.

When I look at the platforms in continental Europe, Zencap is the obvious choice as acquisition target. It is the only platform with a SME loan model very similar to Funding Circle that already operated in multiple markets.

Knecht said at Lendit that he is looking at Italy and France as markets that look interesting for a further expansion.

What does the deal mean for retail investors?

Unlike on other marketplaces there will be no cross-border lending for retail investors on Funding Circle. Both Samir and Knecht explain that the mid-term outlook for this is that retail investors will be able to invest into loans in multiple geographies via a coming fund.
The German platform receives some critic from retail investors, which complain that it is less than perfect and reporting and processes need to improve. This got me wondering for a short while whether the British platform would be used to replace the IT for the continental European markets too. However when I asked Knecht at the conference, he said that there are no plans for that, and that Funding Circle would continue to run seperate IT platforms. Continue reading →

Prestamos Prima Set to Launch P2P Lending Service Viventor in Spain

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Viventor logoBarcelona based company Prestamos Prima launched Viventor, a p2p lending marketplace for real estate loans.

Viventor will be focused on serving the investor side of money market. “The financing model of high street banks is outdated, and they are too slow to change the course as fast as the market demands. Recent years have shown that alternative finance solutions are reshaping the industry, and a major change on stage is inevitable,” states Andris Rozenbahs, CEO of the Prestamos Prima Group.

Vivntor will serve loans for residential and commercial property. All borrowers will be businesses, with loan terms one year and longer. The average interest rate investors will earn is expected to be around 6 to 7.5%. Prestamos Prima told P2P-Banking.com that there will be a secondary market.

The new platform, Viventor, will launch in fall 2015. Initially, it will be open for EU investors only, and provide the opportunity to invest in loans secured by Spanish mortgages. Real estate crowdfunding opportunities, investment insurance and inclusion of the borrower side are all on the roadmap. The Group CEO stresses: “We are set to make tremendous efforts to ensure security and credibility. Our goal is to provide quality investment opportunities, no junks. All the loans will be secured by mortgages carefully evaluated, and Viventor will keep its stake in all the loans listed.” Continue reading →