lendix

Lendix Review – First Repayment

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Since my p2p lending investments are heavily concentrated on UK and Baltic services, one of my New Year’s resolution for 2017 was to diversify into other markets. Therefore in January I opened an account at French p2p lending service Lendix. Lendix is a p2p lending marketplace offering loans to SMEs in France and Spain (read earlier articles on Lendix). It is one of the larger players in continental Europe. Signing up was straightforward. While the minimum bid on loans is just 20 EUR, the minimum amount for deposits and withdrawals is 100 EUR. Investors can deposit either via bank transfer or via credit card (limited amount). Depositing via credit card is a nice feature which is rarely offered by p2p lending services. I like it because I can react within a minute to new loan announcement emails. This is necessary too, as many new loans are fully funded within an hour – and there is no autoinvest. Nearly all actions require two factor authorisation by a code sent to my mobile.

Lendix loan ratingLendix loans carry interest rates from 4 to 9.9% and are for loan terms between 3 and 84 months. There is no fee for investors and no withholding tax for foreign residents. Each loan is assigned a rating score of A, B or C by Lendix. There is also a detailed loan description for each loan. While most of the site is available in English language, loan descriptions and contracts are in French language only.

So far Lendix has done a very good job in vetting borrower applications. The default rate to date is low – only 0.11%. However the marketplace is young and growing and I expect the default rate to rise with time. Also it remains to be seen, if the perfomance of the Spanish loan will be comparable to the French loans.

As there is no secondary market, investors are bound hold the loan to maturity.

Review of my Lendix portfolio

I only just started in January. I concentrated on A and B grade loans, putting 100 EUR in most of them and 20 EUR in those that seemed not as convincing to me (e.g. a loan to a hotel that, when I looked it up on a hotel booking comparision site, had less satisfied customer reviews than the four other competing hotels in the same village). I skipped the new spanish loans.

Right now I have invested 640 EUR in 8 Lendix loans. I would have invested more, but I found the dealflow to be rather sparse in January and February. My average interest rate is 5.9%. This month I received my first repayment rate. Experiences of more seasoned investors report that repayments are usually on-time.

New investors get 20 EUR cashback bonus from Lendix when signing up via this link, once they have invested at least 500 EUR.

 

Lendix loan portfolio
Screenshot of my Lendix loan portfolio – click for larger view

 

Spain: CNMV authorizes MytripleA & Lendix as crowdlending platforms

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The Spanish Securities Exchange Commission (CNMV, Spain’s financial regulator) has authorized MytripleA as a Platform for Participatory Financing, the formal name for a p2p lending platform. This is one of the first actions to implement Law 5/2015 Promotion of Corporate Financing. MytripleA already benefits from a Payment Institution license (which can be passported within the EU) granted by the Bank of Spain, which authorizes MytripleA to make loan disbursements and receive loan instalments within the regulatory environment for banking payments. This is an additional regulatory requirement in Spain, which is not required by other European countries.

With this new authorization, MyTripleA becomes the first crowdlending platform to have both of the required authorizations in Spain. Competitors entering Spain, will not be able to use the the so-called passporting provisions from a financial regulator outside of Spain and will need to apply for a Platform for Participatory Financing license before being able to operate in compliance with Spanish regulations Law 5/2015 Promotion of Corporate Finance provided a unified legal framework for crowdlending platforms and securitized funds, and made CNMV responsible for their creation, authorization and supervision. Crowdlending has experienced rapid growth across Europe. The Spanish market last year grew 266% according to the website P2P-Banking.com. Within the new regulatory framework and with the supervision of CNMV, a greater degree of awareness of the alternative financial services market is expected.

French Lendix announced that it received its formal CNMV accreditation to operate as a P2P lending platform in Spain. The Spanish entity will be the first Lendix international market to open. It will target financing of credits to SME, for amounts ranging from 30,000 to 2,000,000 Euro, duration of 18 to 60 months and at interestrates comprises between 5.5% et 12%. Companies presented on the platform will be selected and analyzed by Lendix credit analysis team and will need to generate a turnover of at least €400’000. Non accredited private investors* will be able to lend up to 3,000 Euro per project with a total maximum yearly amount of 10,000 Euro, while no limit will apply to accredited private investors nor institutional investors. The launch of Lendix’s spanish platform is scheduled for Q4 2016.

Equity crowdfunding platform Crowdcube also received authorization.

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Interview with Patrick de Nonneville, COO of Lendix

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What is Lendix about?

Lendix is an online marketplace for business loans, enabling investors to lend directly to prime small and medium sized enterprises. We started operating in France, making our first loans in April 2015. We’ve made 1.5M EUR of loans in our first month, and are on track for a similar number in May.We lend from 30,000 EUR to 1,000,000 EUR for 18 to 60 months with rates varying from 4% to 9%.

What are the three main advantages for investors?

We offer access to a largely untapped and high quality market, with low defaults and low prepayments. We have the same information as the banks via our Banque de France database membership. Last but not least, we charge no fees to lenders.

Patrick de NonnevilleWhat are the three main advantages for borrowers?

We’re fast, easy and transparent:

– we make offers in 7 business days and our docs are written in plain French

– we guarantee the funding of all the loans we put on the platform

– we require no personal guarantees from the company directors

What ROI can investors expect?

5.5% to 6%.

How did you start Lendix? Is the company funded with venture capital?

Lendix was founded by Olivier Goy in Q3 2014.

France was one of the first countries to lift the legal uncertainties around crowdlending and we saw an opportunity to plug the funding gap that micro and small businesses suffer from. There is a vast amount of capital available to lend, but small businesses find that dealing with banks has become so painful and distracting that they effectively don’t even start the process. Our aim is to surprise borrowers with how painless it is to get a loan.

The company’s shareholders (apart from its leadership) includes a VC, Partech Ventures. Olivier has a long standing relationship with Partech, having worked there himself, and having had Partech has one of the shareholders of the Private Equity company he founded in 2001.

We also have a bank, an asset manager, a family office and a large corporate amongst our backers.

An important point is that Olivier, myself and the other main shareholders of Lendix have skin in the game: we have committed money to our institutional vehicle and lend to every company that comes on the platform, under the same conditions as all the other lenders. Continue reading →