finland

P2P Lending Service Isepankur Opens To Borrowers In Finland

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Estonian p2p lending service Isepankur announced today that it now offers p2p loans to borrowers from Finland. Isepankur already opened to lenders from multiple markets last year. Now Isepankur adds Finland as the first foreign market executing the expansion strategy on the borrower side.

Here is an excerpt of the announcement made today:

Dear customer,

We have taken the next step towards building a pan-European credit platform so you could continue enjoying a great return on your money. We have now also started accepting loan applications from Finnish residents side-by-side with existing Estonian borrowers. We will offer one of the best rates in the market whilst trying to deliver a great return to our international and local investors all in one single platform.

Finnish market offers an opportunity to diversify your portfolio and better manager your returns. Here are some key facts about Finland which you might not have known:

Population: 5.4 million; 67% live in towns or urban areas, 33% in rural areas
Monthly wages: average 3,040 €; men 3,352 €, women 2,735 € (2010)
Internet users: 85,3% of the population internet (ITU, June,2010)
A number of payday loan providers has grown rapidly in recent years pushing up the interest rates up to 50% per annum. Lack of competition in the consumer lending and banking market means that even low risk customers typically pay above 20% per annum.
Situated: Northern Europe, neighbouring Sweden, Norway, Estonia and Russia

…

We believe that there is a big potential for isePankur on the Finnish market as most of the competition consists of unethical and unsustainable loan providers. We are sure that investors will find new attractive investments opportunities with solid returns. Please be aware that it might take a couple of weeks for the Finnish investment opportunities to appear on the market. We will soon also allow you to add market-specific configurations to your investment profiles.

…

P2P Lending Site Isepankur Improves Loan Quality

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Estonian p2p lending service isePankur successfully improved the loan quality in 2010. The company added several validation steps for loan applications. On top of the existing credit bureau checks and it’s own scoring model isePankur introduced several manual checks on the borrowers in May and July. Since September borrowers need to submit bank statements which isePankur uses to verify information presented in the loan application. The measures implemented are listed in detail here.

CEO Pärtel Tomberg told P2P-Banking.com: “…  these [new] loans will … be the most profitable social banking loans for investors across the globe”.

To prove this claim Isepankur is publishing real time performance data on its marketplace.


(See Isepankur site for larger size interactive charts)

‘Unlike other companies you can see the quality of loans per month so the growth rate of the portfolio will not hide the actual returns from loans issued previously.‘ says Pärtel Tomberg.

The charts reflect the drastic reduction of bad debt from loans issued after May 2010 and the very positive impact on lender returns. Continue reading →

Fixura Starts P2P Lending in Finland

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A few days ago Finnish p2p lending site Fixura launched. The bilingual (Finnish & Swedish) site already lists over a hundred loan requests.

CEO Simon Sandvik told P2P-Banking.com:

This social lending company differs from the ‘standard’ ones as it does not provide lending auctions. Instead, the borrower sets his/her own interest rate, amount (1, 000 – 10,000 EUR) and duration of the loan. Then a Finnish credit scoring company processes the data and the borrower gets a one-to-five star rating. If a borrower is marked for payment issues in the past, the loan request automatically gets rejected.

… investors can also diversify their investments through different loans in 100 EUR lots. …

The company operates totally free of paper as it uses the local banks’ identification systems, a kind of e-signature. The investors can invest directly online and the borrowers can sign their contracts.

If a loan does not get fully funded the borrower can choose after 14 days from the first investment to accept a part of it, or reject it as he or she sees fit.

Currently investors pay 4 Euro for each withdrawal. Fees for borrowers are

  • 5% origination fee
  • 2% annual fee
  • 4 Euro per transaction

Compared to other p2p lending services these fees are rather high.