The table lists the loan originations of p2p lending marketplaces for last month. Mintos* leads ahead of Zopa and Ratesetter*. The total volume for the reported marketplaces in the table adds up to 611 million Euro. I track the development of p2p lending volumes for many markets. Since I already have most of the data on file, I can publish statistics on the monthly loan originations for selected p2p lending platforms.
The table lists the loan originations of p2p lending marketplaces for last month. Mintos* leads ahead of Zopa and Ratesetter*. The total volume for the reported marketplaces in the table adds up to 613 million Euro. I track the development of p2p lending volumes for many markets. Since I already have most of the data on file, I can publish statistics on the monthly loan originations for selected p2p lending platforms.
Milestones achieved this month (total volume since launch):
Archover crossed 100M GBP
Credit.fr crossed 50M EUR
Arboribus is listed for the last time, as the platform will cease to originate new loans.
Who? What? You might wonder why that is relevant as most readers are unlikely to be LHV Bank customers. LHV Bank is a bank in Estonia.
I think it is highly interesting, as it is – to my knowledge – the first time a bank has integrated p2p lending investments in its customer interface. So the LHV bank customers, not only see their accounts and stock depots, but also their Estateguru* investments conveniently listed in their online bank dashboard. Much has been talked about what role could banks have in p2p lending (mere transaction banks? providing credit lines?) and also there is a lot of speculation if PSD2 (open banking) will help fintechs to seize the access to the customer from banks because they could control the user interface in the future. But this is actually a first step a bank takes in the opposite direction. By aggregating “non-bank” information inside the dashboard, they aim to make the banking interface more useful for the customers.
(Source: Estateguru)
Press release:
LHV customers can now see their short term property loan investments on LHV internet bank. On the summary view of internet bank, besides public stock exchange investments, one can see also alternative investments like short term property loan investments and cryptocurrencies, thus making it possible to get a quick and comprehensive overview of one’s investment portfolio. EstateGuru and Coinbase are the very first services to be switched on to the platform.
“LHV’s new service is the best example of cooperation between banks and fintech. LHV is most definitely a trendsetter in the banking sector. It is fulfilling to see that short term property lending has become a solid part of investments, and traditional banking has accepted it. EstateGuru has more than 25 000 investors throughout Europe, and the number is rapidly growing among both retail, professional, and institutional investors. We can provide our customers with more added value via interfaces like that of LHV’s “, commented EstateGuru’s COO Mihkel Stamm.
Alternative investments have become a substantial part of the Estonian investment scene, particularly among new investors. There are more than 13 000 people in Estonia who have invested in crowdfunding platforms. The fixed rate of return on debt instruments and access to the new and attractive asset classes have found their well-deserved place in investors’ portfolios. The better the quality of information, the more successful the investors.
“LHV aims to keep pace with its customers’ investment activities and that’s why we decided to take a step closer to the universe of alternative investments. The added value of this new service for our customer is a better and more comprehensive overview of the assets, thus making the portfolio management more successful “, added the Head of Investment Services at LHV, Martin Mets.
About EstateGuru
EstateGuru is the leading European platform connecting an international community of investors and businesses offering the highest diversification options for investors and flexible terms and speed of funding for businesses. The mission of EstateGuru is to provide hassle-free and flexible financing to property developers and entrepreneurs as well as diversified property backed cross-border investment opportunities to its international investor base—from the small individual investors to the institutions and everyone in-between. EstateGuru has more than 25 000 investors from 45 countries and the total money lent to date is more than 122MEUR. …
About LHV
LHV is the largest domestic financial group in Estonia. LHV’s mission is to help to create Estonian capital. According to LHV’s vision, the people and enterprises of Estonia dare to think big, start things and invest in the future. LHV’s values are to be simple, supportive and effective.
On Friday and Saturday I attended the P2P Conference* in Riga. It was the first p2p lending conference in Riga and I was very impressed how well organized it was for a new event. Kudos to the Targetcircle staff who organized that. The audience was platforms, retail investors and bloggers/youtubers mainly from the Baltics and Germany but also sprinkled in from other countries all over Europe. I would estimate about 350 to 400 people in total.
Platforms presenting and attending were nearly exclusively from Eastern Europe (mainly the Baltics). Most of the retail investors came for the chance to meet and speak to the platform representatives in person.
The organizer of the conference is Norwegian affiliate technology company Targetcircle. Targetcircle was founded in 2014. I became aware of them when Mintos switched their affiliate tracking from an inhouse solution to their system around November 2016. Since then they won a wide variety of Eastern European p2p lending platforms as clients for the affiliate tracking solution, but also recently the Irish platform Flender*. Targetcircle concentrates on the underlying technology as a marketing solution for fintechs but also as a (whitelabel) technology for other affiliate networks. The CEO told me he aims next to win more clients for his solutions in the UK and Spanish market and then later on in East Asia.
The conference started with a day of presentation, demos and time to visit the exhibiting platforms at their booth. There was ample time for networking with good catering (outside barbecue with DJ music). A recorded livestream video of the main stage activity is available here.
I really enjoyed the opportunity to talk to so many platform representatives, other bloggers and hear the opinion of many retail investors from recently started to 10+ years investing into peer to peer lending. In general the investor crowd was optimitic about the future prospects of investing into p2p lending and we all exchanged experiences, opinions and tipps on strategies, selecting platforms and evaluating risks.
The atmosphere was very relaxed and informal and it moved to a vacation feeling when on Saturday the venue was located on a beach at a lake.
Attendees spent most of the time chatting and networking, but some more venturous ones took up the offer to try wakeboarding or stand up paddling or got active playing volleyball or boule.
Targetcircle plans to do the conference again next year and I am looking forward to going again.
Mintos* will launch a new product offer called Invest & Access tomorrow. It was already unveiled and presented at the P2P Conference in Riga on Friday. Before I write about it watch the video below for about 10 minutes with Mintos CEO Martins Sulte explaining Mintos Invest and Access.
the video should autostart at the right point. If not it is at 2:29:22
The new offer makes it super-easy for investors to invest and automatically diversify through a very wide selection of loans. Mintos does that by investing the money in all loans on the platform that carry a buyback guarantee and are from originators that are at least 6 months on the platform. Mintos promises that investors will be able to cash out easily (subject to market demand) instantly, saying investors don’t need to bother about handling the loan selling on the seondary market. Mintos does that by selling the non-late loans to other investors.
The investor can still see how the portfolio he holds is composed on an overview page. One important aspect for the market dynamics on Mintos marketplace is that Invest & Access will invest before the autoinvests.
Mintos is cleary aiming to make it easy for new investors that don’t want to spend much time thinking about the investment and optmizing yields by giving them the average yield by just one click. The Invest & Acesss page will show the weighted average interest rate, which at the time I saw that page was showed as 11.98%. But the figure will change and update as market conditions fluctate and as the FAQ says it is not guaranteed.
One important point in the FAQ/footnotes is that the ‘instant access’ only applies to current loans. That means if the investors has e.g. 15% late loans, that would mean that he gets only 85% as instant withdrawal and for the remaining 15% has to wait until either the loan is bought back by the buyback or becomes current again (I suppose in that case the investor could trigger another cashout).
Investors can runs both Mintos Invest & Access as well as the existing autoinvests, should they which, but in that case Invest & Access would use any available cash the investor has first, therefore I would guess that there are rarely any funds left for the autoinvests to use.
My Opinion on Mintos Invest and Access
Mintos clearly offers a product that makes it as easy as possible, lowering the entry hurdles especially for new investors. And as Bondora Go&Grow* shows there is a high demand by investors for simplified products. Statistics published by Bondora show that in April 2019 63% of the new investments in that month where conducted via the Go&Grow product, which is constantly gaining over the other investment methods Bondora offers. Other examples are the Access products offered by British Assetz Capital*.
Looking at it from the perspective of an investor that is a little more experienced and willing to spend a little time Invest & Access does not seem an attractive offer. By definition it offers the weighted average interest rate.
By setting up own autoinvests at Mintos, keeping a good diversification and foregoing the highest risk, investors can currently achieve about 13-14% yield on Mintos. So if they would instead use the new product they would have about 2-3% lower yield, and have actually less control on which originators they invest in. An important point to consider, is that the value Mintos shows you, is the average interest rate, NOT the expected average yield. The yield will be significantly lower than the interest rate as Mintos will include buyback loans from originators with long grace periods or originators that do not pay interest income on delayed payment. Excatly those are typically avoided when investors configure their own autoinvests.
And concerning the argument of liquidity. Mintos is very liquid anyway. Without using the new product it is no problem to liquidate a portfolio within a few minutes to a few hours it just depends on the price. Sure you might have to offer a discount. Maybe depending 0.2%-0.6% on average. But that is a small price if you had the higher yields before.
So would I recommend using Invest & Access over the ‘traditional’ way of setting up own autoinvest? There is one use-case I would. If an investor wants to invest very short-time (for whatever reason ‘parking’ money) for less than say 120 days, than it is worth considering.
In my opinion on why Mintos launched the new product, there are actually two reasons:
there is demand for a simplified product and this new product shall satisfy that
the new product will help on the sales site for attracting and onboarding new orignators. Originators that can only offer rates that are below the average interest rate on the Mintos platform so far were hard to sell. With Invest & Access they will be just part of the bundle and automatically sold (once the originator has been on the platform 6 month)
That brings us to an interesting point. How will Mintos Invest & Access the market dynamics? The big factor here is that Mintos Invest & Access happens BEFORE autoinvest and manual investment. There are already (even before launch) speculations and fears of investors that it might bring down interest rates or ‘force’ them to use the new product to avoid cash drag, but I think it is much to early to make any prediction what might be the outcome. But I sure am curious what this will do to the activity on the Mintos marketplace.
What are your opinions on the new product? Please share them in the comments. Thx.
P.S.: The following interview with the Mintos CEO was recorded just before the announcement of the new product, therefore it does not cover Invest and Access – but it has a lot of information on the current state of Mintos.
Baltic property p2p lending marketplace Estateguru* announced, that it has raised a 1.3M EUR round led by Speedinvest f. Speedinvest f is a focus fund launched by Speedinvest, targeting Fintech investments across Europe. Speedinvest will support EstateGuru in its geographic expansion across Europe.
Marek Pärtel, founder and CEO of EstateGuru, outlines the company’s mission to become the largest pan-European real estate financing marketplace: ‘Today, EstateGuru has become the largest platform in mainland Europe, showing an average annual growth rate of 100%. Simultaneously, we have discovered excellent opportunities to further increase our market coverage and it is for this purpose that we have drafted a clear technological development plan that requires a strong partner in order to be implemented successfully.’
Christopher Zemina, Investment Manager at Speedinvest, explains the background of the investment: ‘EstateGuru is the story of a small team that has achieved extraordinary growth without much external funding. The team has executed their plans and constantly outperformed our expectations. We are determined to support the company in its next stage of growth.’
