Wow, 5 years have passed since I first started to invest into p2p lending at Bondora in October 2012. I periodically review my experiences in this blog – you can read my last update here. Over the total time I did deposit 14,000 Euro and withdrew 17,800 Euro.  So over time I withdrew more than I ever deposited, meaning 3,800 Euro realized profit. Even better: I still have 604 loans in my Bondora portfolio with an outstanding principal of 7,467 Euro at an average interest rate of 23.78%. Of these 2,746 Euro are in current loans, 778 Euro in overdue loans and 3,941 Euro in 60+ days overdue loans. Some of this very overdue loans do in fact make very regular monthly payments, albeit smaller than the planned payments in the original payment schedule – it will take much longer for the loan to be repaid. And of course many of my red loans are duds, which haven’t made a single repayment and it is unlikely any recovery will be achieved. There is 43 Euro cash in the account.

Bondora shows a net return of 19.0% for my portfolio. In my own calculations, using XIRR in Excel, assuming that 30% of my 60+days overdue and 15% of my overdue loans will not be recovered, my ROI calculations result in 17.2% return. Even if I assume total loss on all outstanding loans that are 60+days overdue my ROI calculation results in 15.6%

Let’s look how my remaining portfolio is distributed by several criteria

Chart 1: My portfolio by country; majority in Estonian loans, remainder in Finnish loans

Chart 2: My portfolio by rating: more than half of the amount in B and C rated loans, large portions also in A and D ratings

Current situation at Bondora

New investors cannot expect to achieve similar yields. Interest rates are much lower now than when I started and I achieved a portion of my profit by trading loans on the secondary market at premium.
If you want to start on the Bondora p2p lending marketplace now, consider using the Portfolio Pro autoinvest set to Estonian loans only with AA to B (or C) credit grades. Maybe try some Finnish loans with better credit grades too.

Bondora originates roughly 3 million Euro new loans per month. There is no cash drag, usually available amounts get invested very fast.

Chart 3: Cumulative all time development of my portfolio by credit grades 2012-2017. Remember I only deposited 14,000 Euro. The high 76,698 Euro given as total investment is a result of reinvestments and active buying and selling of loans.