isepankur

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.

…

My P2P Lending Loan Portfolio at Isepankur after 8 Months

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When p2p lending service Isepankur opened up to investors from all EU countries five month ago, I started lending there. In this post I continue the series of posts reviewing the development of my loan portfolio. I have deposited 7,500 Euro (approx. 9,700 US$) since starting. My investment is spread out over more than 400 loan parts. Together the loans add up to 7,859 Euro outstanding principal. Loans in the value of 276 Euro are late, meaning they (partly) missed one or two repayments. 133 Euro are in loans that are more than 60 days late. I already received 1,233 Euro in repaid principal back.

Chart 1: Screenshot of loan status

Most of the money in my account is working to earn interest. Only 98 Euro are currently held in cash. 245 Euro are tied in bids on current loan listings and will originate in the next few days.


Chart 2: Screenshot of account balance

How I used the secondary market

Looking at my account balance (see chart 2) you will notice the relative large amount (2,032 Euro) of sold loans. This is due to 2 developments.
Continue reading →

New Investment Fund Focussing on Investing in Global P2P Lending

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‘P2P Income Partners‘ is a new investment fund by Symfonie Capital that will invest capital in p2p loans. The founder, Michael Sonenshine, an ex-investment banker, told P2P-Banking.com that he plans the first tranche to be 25 million Euro. He says: “Initially we will invest in loans issued by sites such as Prosper, Lending club, Funding Circle, Zopa, Isepankur and we will add fonds to the mix as we see fit. The P2P market is not only web-based.  There are opportunities to make direct loan across Europe.  The key to success is spreading the risk and doing careful due diligence.”. The fund is open to qualified investors. Minimum investment is stated as 100,000 US$.

Isepankur Launches Secondary Market – P2P Loans Now Tradeable

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Today Isepankur launched the possibility for lenders to sell and buy loan (parts) on a secondary marketplace. Lenders can list the loans they want to sell at the secondary marketplace and set a price which either is equal to the outstanding principal or apply a premium (up to 5%) or a discount to that. The fee Isepankur charges if a transaction closes is 1.5% (each) from seller and buyer.

I talked about the advantages a secondary market offers in p2p lending before. Most major marketplace have added the possibility to sell or buy loans. The latest to introduce this feature was Ratesetter.

In the past weeks Isepankur also introduced borrower groups (A, B and C), which group loan applications by discretionary income. Combined with the credit history classification already used (600-1000) loan applications are now classified by a combination of both (e.g. A800).

Review of My Isepankur Portfolio after 5 Months of P2P Lending

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When p2p lending service Isepankur opened up to investors from all EU countries five month ago, I started lending there. In this post I continue the series of posts reviewing the development of my loan portfolio. I have deposited 6,000 Euro (approx. 7,800 US$) since starting. The account currently has 126 Euro in cash, 70 Euro waiting in bids on loans to close and 6,550 Euro is invested in loans. So far I was repaid 476 Euro principal and received 271 Euro interest.


Chart 1: Screenshot of account balance

Distribution of loans on credit grade ranges

My investment is spread out over about 350 loan parts (a bit less loans as sometimes I have 2 or 3 bids in one loan). 5,435 Euro (83%) is invested in top credit grade (“1000”) loans. 780 Euro (12%) in “900” grade loans. And the remainder are experimental bids in “600”-“800” grade loans. Continue reading →

My Isepankur Portfolio after 2 Months of Lending

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Two month ago, when p2p lending service Isepankur opened up to investors from all EU countries, I started lending there. In this post I look at the status of the portfolio I have built so far.

I have deposited 4,000 Euro (approx. 5,200 US$) over the past weeks. The account currently has 254 Euro in cash, 215 Euro waiting in bids on loans to close and the majority of 3,580 Euro is invested in loans. I invested usually between 10 and 35 Euro per loan. The average interest rate of the loans is 25% and loan terms are between 1 and 36 months with most loans running for 24 months or longer. Most of the investments were done using the automatic bidding feature: About two thirds of the loans are fully funded by automatic bids the minute they appear on the marketplace. It is therefore necessary to use the automatic bidding, or these loans will be missed investment opportunities.


Screenshot of Account Overview

Repayments

So far nearly all repayments came on time. Of the few who missed a payment date, all but two repaid the next day. Currently only one loan (10 Euro) of my portfolio is a few days overdue. One loan was fully repaid early after only one month. In December I have scheduled repayments of 149 Euro which consist of 91 Euro principal and 58 Euro interest. In January – with more loans reaching first repayment date – repayments will rise to over 250 Euro. Isepankur offers monthly and daily charts forecasting cash flow.


Screenshot of Isepankur cashflow view for my portfolio showing payment dates and amounts in December

Statistics

The portfolio management has a statistics section that daily calculates the return on investment. Continue reading →