grupeer

Two Issues Currently Evolving on P2P Lending Marketplaces

wiseclerk 26 Comments

This week some investors on the p2p lending marketplaces Viventor*, Grupeer* and Mintos* are affected by issues that hinder the normal procedures on these marketplaces.

Viventor started to display the following warning message yesterday (visible only if you click on an affected loan)

Aforti Viventor
(Screenshot from Viventor.com)

As a result, multiple Aforti loans were on offer on the secondary market for 5 to 15% discount (at one point in time I saw 35% discount)

Asked for a comment, Viventor CEO Andrius Bolsaitis told P2P-Banking.com:

According to information that we have now, they have some cash management issues, we are in discussions with them and hope to resolve the situation soon. I will be personally meeting with their managers tomorrow in Warsaw and will have more updates then.

Update 14:02: Apparently Mintos has now suspended trading of Aforti loans on the secondary market. I reached out this morning to Mintos’ management for a comment on how they see the situation with Aforti.

Update 14:42: Reply from Mintos CEO:

Hi … ,

Thank you for your email.Aforti is overdue on passing to Mintos payments which Aforti has received from borrowers and payment for buybacks. Thus, we are suspending repayments and buybacks. We are meeting Aforti tomorrow in Warsaw and will update investors accordingly. Below excerpt from communication to all investors:
Mintos has suspended automatic repayments and buybacks for loans originated by Aforti Finance on our marketplace (EUR and PLN).
The decision was made based on Aforti Finance’s overdue transfers of borrower’s payments to the Mintos marketplace.

In order to protect the interests of our investors, all loans issued by Aforti Finance have been removed from the primary and secondary markets of the Mintos marketplace. This means you cannot buy or sell Aforti Finance loans, effective immediately until further notice.

Update 16:02: Statement from Aforti Holding:

Dear Sir,

In response to the questions regarding the message released by Viventor, we would like to inform you following.

We are currently at the stage of closing cooperation with the Viventor platform, what has been announced to Viventor. Situation suggested by Viventor is a result  of  change in Aforti Finance S.A business strategy. Our decision is determined by technical difficulties in cooperation with  Viventor platform. Also cause most workload has to be done manually, our operational risk increased significantly. This is what we want to avoid, cause AFORTI business model and operational procedures are going rather in the direction of using API to automatize processes and to minimize human errors.

It’s also worth to add, that we have not been using  Viventor platform for new loans for about two last months, as a result of mentioned above decision. Of course Viventor receives daily financial transfers, so we do not see any reason for such a message.

Due to the fact that for tomorrow (Thursday, August the 8th ) we have scheduled a meeting with the Viventor, we believe all misunderstandings will be clarified.

Update Aug. 8th: the meetings are at 12:00/13:00 (Warsaw time)

Update Aug. 8th: Debitum Network* says investors on the Debitum platform are not affected as all Aforti loans were bought back on July 25th

Update Aug 9th: from Mintos*

Update Aug 9th: by Viventor

As previously announced the meeting with Aforti took place in Warsaw. The parties found a solution with regard to the technical issues. We consider the solution satisfactory for both sides and expect all issues to be resolved during next week.

Update Aug. 12th: Mintos now says they had an agreement with Aforti since January 2019, due to which Aforti would not place any new loans on the primary market. Strangely they only communicate that agreement now. Why not in January?

Our team is once again meeting with Aforti Finance in Warsaw, Poland today to continue to work out the details of last week’s initiated solution for Aforti Finance to resume transferring borrower repayments to us for distribution among investors.

We aim to release the next more detailed update tomorrow.

Until then we thank you for your patience, as well as the questions to our Investors Service team and comments on the blog and social media. We are preparing to release answers to them as soon as we handle the current priority of resuming payments.

We also wish to remind that Aforti Finance has not been placing loans on the Mintos primary market since January 2019. It was a mutual agreement with Aforti Finance following a weaker than expected loan performance and IT system related issues. Aforti Finance has continued servicing the loans since then and the total Aforti outstanding loan portfolio on the Mintos marketplace has decreased from EUR 5.7 million on December 31, 2018 to current EUR 2.2 million as of August 12, 2019. In light of adverse changes in the mood on the Polish securitization and bond market as well as our due diligence insights on the company’s internal arrangements changes, we reflected our risk precautions by downgrading Aforti to C+ in March 2019.

At this stage we remain committed to working with Aforti Finance to continue servicing loans and passing borrower repayments to investors on the Mintos marketplace as soon as possible.

Update Aug. 12th: I have analysed the Mintos loan data and came to the result that the last Aforti loan, was listed on January 2nd on the Mintos primary market.

Update Aug. 13th: Several investors report that they received a repayment incl. late fees on this Aforti loan on Viventor today.

Update Aug. 14th: Mintos has announced that Aforti payments have resumed as of today. Aforti loans on the secondary market stay suspended.

Update Nov. 6th: Viventor has issued the following update:

… an update on the situation with the investments into loans issued by Aforti Factor S.A. and Aforti Finance S.A. on ViVentor platform, we want to update you on our actions regarding the repayment of loans, including the buyback guarantees, which were put on hold from the 6th of August 2019.
On August 12th, 2019 ViVentor has negotiated and signed Settlement Agreements with Aforti Factor S.A and Aforti Finance S.A. Each agreement contained a daily payment schedule which was designed to ease up the cash flows of the companies and make it easier for them to repay their outstanding debt at that time. Both agreements expired on September 13th, 2019. By then Aforti Factor S.A has managed to pay all of their outstanding debt and the debt of Aforti Finance S.A. has settled their debt from the schedule on November 5th, 2019.
However, new debt has been growing for both companies ever since and now we are taking all necessary actions, including legal ones to have the full amount paid of current and late dues and to protect the interests of our investors.
…
What is next?
Our team is planning once again to meet with the management of Aforti Finance S.A. and Aforti Factor S.A. to continue to work out the details and find solutions to resume transferring borrower repayments to us for distribution among investors. The meeting date and place are being settled right now. We aim to release the next, more detailed update on our cooperation and ongoing payments executions within a few days (after the meeting has taken place). We would like to assure you that your concerns are of the utmost importance to us.

Earlier this week on Monday, it became evident that the Lithuanian central bank had suspended the operations of Satchelpay (source), which Grupeer* used as one of two ways for deposits by investors. From Tuesday onwards Grupeer asked investors to use the alternate deposit method via Baltic international bank only and said that they will add new payment providers this week.

Asked by P2P-Banking what the status of investor payments is, that were made shortly before or on the day of suspension to Satchelpay, a Grupeer contact told P2P-Banking:

At the moment we are in contact with the bank and have received the information that all transferred funds will be returned to the account of the sender. However, we cannot provide you with the exact terms.
More detailed information will follow.

Hopefully both incidents will be resolved satisfactorily for investors. On both issues I see room for improvement on communications with investors.

Interview with Grupeer

wiseclerk 2 Comments

Interview with Alla Kisika, founder and Vladislav Filimonovs, COO of Grupeer

What is Grupeer about?

Alla Kisika: Grupeer is all about people! We have created the platform which is based on 3 pillars:

  • Security (protection)
  • Technologies (efficiency)
  • Benefit (profitability)

Our platform is not just the bridge connecting the borrower and the investors, Grupeer is a transparent environment in which the investors can feel safe, receiving fast and clear high profit, using the latest technologies.

What are the three main advantages for investors?

Vladislav Filimonov: As mentioned, the financial safety of our investors is our main priority. First of all, the number of outstanding or default transactions it is equal to zero. This indicator is reached only to our rigid scoring which eliminates nearly 75% of the loan originators interested to place the projects on our platform. The reverse side of the coin is lack of variety of the projects.

Secondly, we give a unique opportunity to diversify the portfolio, investing in business loans or in development projects within one platform.

And last but not least, all of our loan originators provide BuyBack guarantees for each project. Besides, our investors get access to all financial information of the borrower of the project. To convince of our advantages, we offer the minimum sum of the contribution of 10 EUR, we are sure that after the first experience, the investors will become our loyal customer!

As for development projects, in many scenarios, the management members of Grupeer are acting as a shareholder to have a full control towards successful implementation of it.

What are the three main advantages for borrowers?

Alla Kisika: To clarify, Grupeer doesn’t issue the credits and we are working with legal entities only.

“Fuel for your business.” The borrower has a possibility of refinancing due to the services of our platform, and it means that, the company will get the financial resources or as we call it – fuel to grow the company at the velocity of the rocket.

The size doesn’t matter. We consider borrowers of all sizes. And experience has shown that size doesn’t matter. Even if the borrower is small, but with good financial history, we are ready to provide favorable credit rates, fast result and high-quality services to grow together!

Great Customer Experience. We are sure that services and the ideas can be copied but what really distinguishes is the way the service is provided. Customer satisfaction is our Top priority. We practice the individual approach to each partner from the beginning to the very end.

What ROI can investors expect?

Alla Kisika: We can proudly say that now the average net annual return of Grupeer is 14.25% and it is the highest annual average rate on the market. Most of our projects have the stable interest rate of 14%, some of them, for example, the most loved by German investors- Finsputnik Platforma SIA projects have 15% interest rate.

It should be mentioned that there is no correlation between a high interest rate and the increased risk. Such high-interest rate is stipulated by company’s policy and marketing strategy which makes our platform attractive to check the mechanism of return of percent and principal.

Grupeer offers a wide variety of loans from several countries. How do you succeed in sourcing and checking these loans?

Vladislav Filimonov: As mentioned above, we don’t offer a wide range of the loans from the different countries but considering that we could critically improve our scoring system that pays off for 100% (we would like to remind that the number of expired and default transactions is equal to zero). Besides, our sales team started to work on attracting the new projects therefore soon we will please our investors with many new projects.

How did you get the idea to launch a p2p lending marketplace?

Alla Kisika: Life gave the idea of the platform development. In due time, the founders of the platform had a very serious project regarding the construction and commissioning of the Thermal power plant. At some point, when a large amount of financial means has been already invested and very little remained before the end of the project, the need of additional 3 million euros has appeared. Founders have faced a problem of the full amount as someone wanted to invest only 500’000 EUR, someone 1’500’000 EUR and these people were not friendly with each other therefore a certain sum of money hasn’t been collected till the deadline and the project was closed. And the conclusion was obvious –  human relationship shouldn’t influence implementation of the projects and that it is necessary to develop the platform which will provide such an opportunity. And Grupeer platform has been developed for this purpose.

Can you please tell us a bit about your background and the team’s background?

Vladislav Filimonov: Force and success of our company is our employees. From myself, I have gained a massive experience in leading Large Group of Multinational Teams as a Vice-President of Mastercard and while working in Pay Pal. This experience is now spread across all functions of Grupeer to make it even more investors-oriented platform.

Below you can meet some of our team members:

CEO – Andrey Kisiks is the professional developer with 20+ years of experience in European Union. Fields of activity: construction, residential real estate projects development, construction and operational commissioning of complex technical objects (Power Supply), Finance and Peer-to-Peer.

CMO – Leonid Tenkaluk is experienced Digital Marketing Manager with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and sales industry. Skilled in Team Management, Marketing Management, Negotiation, E-commerce and Entrepreneurship.

We very thoroughly select our employees, as our loan originators. In April of this year, several strong experts joined our team, and, in a few months, we are planning to double the number of our teammates to boost our team and to be able to go from “good” to “great.”

GrupeerIs the technical platform self-developed?

Vladislav Filimonov: Yes, our technical platform is 100% self-developed without using some “ready-to-use” software products. Besides that, we did not use any outsourcing services. The basic part of the platform is developed, but we continue to improve it on daily basis. We are planning to add several innovative solutions for the more convenient use of our platform in near future.

How is the company financed? Is it profitable?

Alla Kisika: The company is self-financed. As we have only started to conquer financial oceans, we didn’t manage to generate profit yet, but we are planning to reach a break-even already in the next year.

What were the main challenges when launching your platform?

Alla Kisika: As in any innovative field under that is not regulated by law we have faced several the bureaucratic issues which we are solving successfully. Secondly, we have spent a lot of time on development of the reliable scoring system to minimize any investor’s risks. And the main challenge today is to get our values over to the audience and to earn its trust.

Is Grupeer open to international investors?

Vladislav Filimonov: Yes, we are. Now, we work with investors who are EU residents. Soon, we will certainly expand our geography.

Where do you see Grupeer in 3 years?

Vladislav Filimonov: Our main objective in following 3 yeas is to become a leader service provider of the alternative investment market in EU. We don’t want to open plans prematurely, but we are planning to become the conductor to unique products in this market. To prove ourselves as the most innovative, safe and favourable platform.

You have one wish, that the regulator will fulfil. What is your wish?

Vladislav Filimonov: As they say – be careful what you wish for, you may receive it. Our sole ambition is the liberal relation to this field as P2P business is very perspective alternative for World economy.

P2P-Banking.com thanks Alla Kisika and Vladislav Filimonov for the interview.