P2P Lending marketplace Isepankur yesterday rebranded as Bondora. Bondora is active for borrowers in Estonia, Spain, Finland and Slovakia and lenders in 29 countries across Europe (all European Union countries plus Switzerland).
Following a new 1.3M Euro round of financing raised for the company, Bondora welcomes a new board to help the company in delivering an innovative business idea across the borders.
Mark Noetzold (a member of various supervisory boards and a lecturer for risk management in Germany, Switzerland and Austria), João P. S. Monteiro (an international manager responsible for global development at a blue-chip company) and Mati Otsmaa (a C-level management executive with extensive experience in consumer credit lending at American Express, Barclays, Citibank, Chase, Experian and HSBC) join forces to improve, market and raise awareness for the first cross-border peer-lending platform Bondora.
„Direct or p2p lending is the most rapidly developing financial service today and has a huge future potential by offering the best solutions to the borrowers and high returns for the lenders. I believe that Bondora, with its cross-border strategy, strong team and the ability to execute fast, has the potential to change the world of finance to be more transparent and straightforward,†– commented João P. S. Monteiro, board member and one of the angel investors.
According to an article in E24 Postimees the new investors now hold about 19% to 20% of the company shares.
„Over the last 5 years we have brought together over 70,000 customers from 29 countries to borrow and lend on our platform. The newly raised capital will be used to improve, market and raise awareness of our service further. Today we have a product, where a telephone engineer from Estonia could get funds to renovate his flat from a dozen of lenders located in any European country. Not only our borrowers get a chance to have their loans financed, but they get the best available deal on the marketplace. A secretary from Slovakia, for example, ready to pay 28% for a 600 Euro loan to study English, might end up paying only 12% because lenders pile in. It is a simple and secure application process for the borrowers and a possibility to diversify private investment for the lenders. At the moment 26% of our lenders come from Germany, 11% from the UK and 4% from Switzerland (with the rest being spread across Europe). With the rapid growth of the company in the last year, the old name could no longer accommodate room for our cross-border growth, that is why today we are also launching our new name – Bondora, and our website available in 23 languages,†– commented the CEO of Bondora, Pärtel Tomberg.
New Brand Across Europe
According to Tomberg, Bondora stands different from other peer-lending companies by operating across borders, while many others work within one market only. By April 2014 the company has issued over 14M EUR in loans with more than half of that in the past 5 months alone.
Isepankur also introduces a new product Bondora+. I’ll review that in a separate blog post, once there are first experiences with the offer.
(Source: Press release)
Hi,
Firstly thank you for your blog – it’s full of very useful advices about P2P lending. Thanks a lot !!
Secondly 🙂 I would like to ask you: can you write a new summarization article about what would you advice someone who starts his own account on isePankur.ee with for example 10 000EUR – what strategy would you recommend him – how should he set up automatic lending – what do you do with overdue loans and what with overdue loans 60 day + do you sell them all ? do you sell them partly ? do you hold them ?
I read all your blog posts but you don’t answer these questions – well you mention many strategies you would like to try but there is not clear what do you do right now – what investment profiles do you have open right now
(you started with these 3:
One to make 30 Euro bids at 14.5% on all new loans with 1000 credit rating (best credit grade), keeping 0 Euro minimum balance
One to make 30 Euro bids at 15.5% on all new loans with 900 credit rating (second best), keeping 60 Euro minimum balance
One to make 10 Euro bids at 18% on all new 12 to 24 months loans with 600 to 800 credit rating, keeping 100 Euro minimum balance
but what do you use right now ? 🙂
I would be very grateful if you share these informations with us
Regards,
Ondrej
Hi Ondrej,
great that you like the blog.
re Starting: I recommend that you start slow and get a better feeling and understanding how Bondora works. After that you could try the strategy you prefer. With 10.000 Euro I would recommend maximum bid size 50 Euro (better 25 Euro).
Whether it is advisable to sell or hold overdue loans is debateable. I would not recommend selling them before they are at least 30 days overdue as many pay up after a few days overdue. And if you do sell them (Estonian loans) I think you should only discount them 3% maximum. Otherwise I’d rather hold them and hope they pay during recollection by the bailiff.
Regarding what I do now. Most of my cash is invested, so my strategy will not be the same as that of a new lender wanting to invest 10000 Euro balance. Also I have changed my profiles a few times since I started. I have these active profiles right now:
– EE A1000 60 months loans: 25 Euro at 14% (I sometime switch this off when cash is all spent)
– EE A1000 24-60 months loans: 40 Euro at 21%
– EE A800-900 24-60 months loans: 20 Euro at 24%
– EE B1000 36-60 months loans: 10 Euro at 9%
– SV A1000 36-60 months loans: 5 Euro at 19%
All those are set to 59% max DTI
Thank you very much for fast response !! I’ll start slowly – I don’t want invest 10 000EUR in one week or in few days.. I’ll test my own strategy and of course I’ll test your strategy 🙂
I really appreciate your work !
Once more thank you for this blog .. sharing your experiences.. it’s just awesome and it helped me a loooot
Hello wiseclerk,
Thank you for all the interesting stuff!
Do you still invest multiple parts into interesting loans and sell the extra 1-2 parts on the secondary market?
Not right now. But I plan some experiments with the new Bondora+ product. I will take multiple parts of selected Bondora+ loans.
Hi,
have you ever got any of the 60+days overdue loans paid back?
Yes