Bondora Sole Focus Now on Go&Grow Product

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P2P lending service Bondora* has announced that in future it will focus completely on its hands-off investing product Go&Grow. From February 27th, the products called Portfolio Pro and Portfolio Manager will be discontinued. These allowed investors to select into which individual loans they wanted to invest. Bondora originally started and grew big with investment into individual loans and only 2018 introduced the simplified Go&Grow product which soon became very popular (read my coverage on the start of the Go&Grow product written 5 years ago). Over the years Go&Grow became more and more important for Bondora as investors seemed to prefer the easy to understand product with a fixed interest rate. Bondora’s marketing was focused on this type of investing and also Bondora made it harder to invest into the Portfolio Pro and Portfolio Manager products in the last years by allocating less available loan amounts for investment to these products. In the last years it was no longer possible to invest relevant amounts via Portfolio Pro as allocated investment pieces were only 1 Euro into each loan.

bondora product changeTherefore it comes as no surprise that today’s announcement by Bondora states that currently 96% of all investments are made via Go&Grow. Bondora points out that Go Grow is very easy to use ‘As portfolio diversification is automated, you can just add money, automatically earn returns, and continue living your life. ‘. The Go&Grow product offers up to 6.75% interest (limited for existing customers) or in the Go&Grow unlimited version 4% interest (unlimited, new and existing customers).

The secondary market will continue to operate beyond Feb. 27th. It will still be possible to sell and buy individual loans just not to invest into new individual loans.

Bondora* is one of the longest operating p2p lending services in Europe. The platform has more than 215,000 investors according to the website. Investments are into the underlying consumer loans, which Bondora originates via its website to borrowers in Estonia, Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands. There are few comparable p2p lending services that offer one fixed rate to investors without any configuration/selection possibilities.

International P2P Lending Volumes December 2022

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The table lists the loan originations of p2p lending marketplaces for last month. Mintos* leads ahead of Peerberry* and Robocash*. The total volume for the reported companies in the table adds up to 258 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.

Investors living in national markets with no or limited selection of local p2p lending services can check this list of international investing on p2p lending services. Investors can also explore how to make use of current p2p lending cashback offers available. UK investors can compare IFISA rates.

international p2p lending volume december 2022
Table: P2P Lending Volumes in December 2022. Source: own research
Note that volumes have been converted from local currency to Euro for the purpose of comparison. Some figures are estimates/approximations.

Links to the platforms listed in the table: Archover*, Bondora*, Bulkestate*, Credit.fr*, Crowdproperty*, Debitum Network*, Esketit*, Estateguru*, Finansowo*, Finbee*, Folk2Folk*, Geldvoorelkaar*, Heavyfinance*, Investly*, Iuvo Group*, Kuflink*, Kviku.Finance*, Landlordinvest*, Lendermarket*, Linked Finance*, Mintos*, October*, Peerberry*, Proplend*, Robocash*, Swaper*, Twino*, Viainvest*.

Notice to p2p lending services not listed: Continue reading →

International P2P Lending Volumes November 2022

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The table lists the loan originations of p2p lending marketplaces for last month. Mintos* leads ahead of Peerberry* and Robocash*.The total volume for the reported companies in the table adds up to 336 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 crossed this month:

  • Soisy* crossed 100M EUR loans originated since launch

Investors living in national markets with no or limited selection of local p2p lending services can check this list of international investing on p2p lending services. Investors can also explore how to make use of current p2p lending cashback offers available. UK investors can compare IFISA rates.

p2p lending volume statistic november 2022
Table: P2P Lending Volumes in November 2022. Source: own research
Note that volumes have been converted from local currency to Euro for the purpose of comparison. Some figures are estimates/approximations.

Links to the platforms listed in the table: Archover*, Assetz Capital*, Bondora*, Bulkestate*, Credit.fr*, Crowdproperty*, Debitum Network*, Esketit*, Estateguru*, Finansowo*, Finbee*, Folk2Folk*, Geldvoorelkaar*, Heavyfinance*, Investly*, Iuvo Group*, Kuflink*, Kviku.Finance*, Landlordinvest*, Lendermarket*, Linked Finance*, Mintos*, October*, Peerberry*, Proplend*, Robocash*, Soisy*, Swaper*, Twino*, Viainvest*.

Notice to p2p lending services not listed: Continue reading →

Lower Withholding Taxes for Foreign P2P Investors on Latvian Platforms Effective from Nov. 14th

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Long awaited the law that several Latvian p2p lending platforms have been lobbying for will become effective on Nov. 14th 2022. This will lower the withholding taxes applied on interests earned by EU and EEA investors from 20% to 5%. Furthermore Mintos* says, that investors will need to only confirm their country of residence once. It will be no longer necessary for them to supply additional documentation or certificates a requirement which had put off investors from many countries. In several countries the 20% could not be fully deducted when declaring taxes with the local tax authorities. And while it could be lowered to 10% there was unliked paperwork associated with that, that needed to be repeated every tax year.

While the change has been announced by Mintos, it will also apply to other Latvian platforms like Twino* or Viainvest*.

International P2P Lending Volumes October 2022

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The table lists the loan originations of p2p lending marketplaces for last month. Mintos* leads ahead of Peerberry* and Esketit*. The total volume for the reported companies in the table adds up to 265 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 crossed this month:

  • Robocash* reached 500M EUR loans originated since launch
  • Esketit* crossed 100M EUR loans originated since launch

Investors living in national markets with no or limited selection of local p2p lending services can check this list of international investing on p2p lending services. Investors can also explore how to make use of current p2p lending cashback offers available. UK investors can compare IFISA rates.

international p2p lending statistic october 2022
Table: P2P Lending Volumes in October 2022. Source: own research
Note that volumes have been converted from local currency to Euro for the purpose of comparison. Some figures are estimates/approximations.

Links to the platforms listed in the table: Archover*, Assetz Capital*, Bondora*, Bulkestate*, Credit.fr*, Crowdproperty*, Debitum Network*, Esketit*, Estateguru*, Finansowo*, Finbee*, Folk2Folk*, Geldvoorelkaar*, Heavyfinance*, Investly*, Iuvo Group*, Kuflink*, Kviku.Finance*, Landlordinvest*, Lendermarket*, Linked Finance*, Mintos*, October*, Peerberry*, Proplend*, Robocash*, Soisy*, Swaper*, Twino*, Viainvest*.

Notice to p2p lending services not listed: Continue reading →

State of the Swiss Market

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Compared to other European markets the Swiss p2p lendng market has been late in developing. Regulatory hurdles and an upper limit on interest rates for consumer loans of 10% (12% for card loans) have slowed development of the market. But it seems that real estate loans finally delivered a break through in 2019-2021.

The new study ‘Marketplace Lending Report Switzerland 2022‘ by Simon Amrein, Nadine Berchtold and Andreas Dietrich of Lucerne University delivers a detailed analysis of the market.

According to the report there are currently 14 platforms active in the market:

swiss platforms
Source: Marketplace Lending Report Switzerland 2022, p. 7

Several banks and insurances have taken stakes in platforms:

  • Funders is operated by the Luzerner Kantonalbank and licensed to other cantonal banks
  • The Lendico platform was acquired from PostFinance by Lend (Switzerlend AG) in 2019. PostFinance has acquired a stake of Lend in a reciprocal move.
  • Neocredit was launched in 2019 by French platform credit.fr and the insurance company Vaudoise. Since 2022, the Vaudoise Group has been the sole shareholder of neocredit.ch
  • In December 2021 the Basellandschaftliche Kantonalbank bought a stake in swisspeers AG as a strategic investor.

According to the report the p2p lending segment reached a record volume of 607 million CHF new loans in 2021 with a growth rate of 35.5% from 2020 to 2021. The largest share 418 million CHF went to real estate loans. The major driver were loans to companies in the real estate business. Many of these loans are issued as short-term credits to be later redeemed by banks.

Switzerland p2p lending develoment of loan volume
Source: Marketplace Lending Report Switzerland 2022, p. 8

The study finds: ‘The COVID-19 crisis in 2020 has been  one of the biggest crisis in Switzerland during the last decade. Despite increased default rates , the returns both in the consumer and the SME segment remained positive and recovered in 2021. The current situation remains challenging for the economy and financial markets, given the high inflation and rising interest rates’.

returns of swiss p2p lending loans
Source: Marketplace Lending Report Switzerland 2022, p. 11

The study has several conclusions, some of which are:

  1. Rebound effect after COVID crisis: ‘Before the .. crisis returns … were high and risk – measured by default rates – low. The crisis was an important test, providing investors with a realistic risk and return profile of the asset class‘
  2. Changing interest rate environment is a test for online business models
  3. Sustainability is increasingly becoming a topic in the debt market
  4. More transparency, more relevance: ‘… Increased relevance will require more transparency in the market … for institutional and private investors‘