Jean Galea

Health, Wealth & Happiness

  • Start Here
  • About
  • Investing
    • Cryptoassets
    • P2P Lending
    • Real estate
  • Podcast
  • Search

🤔 Bondora Review 2021 – How I Got 17.16% ROI

Last updated: March 29, 202110 Comments

Bondora review

Bondora is one of the oldest peer-to-peer lending platforms, and I joined early on in my P2P lending journey, around 2016.

While this platform has been criticized by investors in the past, as of 2021, my portfolio has been chugging along quite well over the years, and my only complaint would be about the graphics and UI of the platform, which I find really ugly.

In this Bondora review, I’ll be sharing my results on this Estonian platform, since many of you have been asking me if you should invest in this platform and if so, how to do it.

You probably know this platform by the very distinctive cartoon characters they employ on the website. I find them a bit old-fashioned, but there’s no question that it gives Bondora a very distinctive and memorable branding.

Alright, so let’s dive straight into it.

bondora returns

Bondora’s slogan is “it just takes a minute to beat your bank”, and I would say that’s true. I sometimes forget I even have an account on Bondora as it was super easy to set up since I used their Go and Grow system all along.

Other investors have had tough times with defaults and delays when using other strategies, and that seems to be the source of most of the bad comments about Bondora.

Bondora assigns a rating to its loans going all the way from AA to HR. HR stands for high risk. Those who invested in the riskier loans chasing high returns got burnt.

On the other hand, everyone seems to agree that Go and Grow has always worked just fine.

I would, therefore, recommend that you use Go and Grow if you want to add Bondora to your diversified set of peer-to-peer lending investments.

Through this method, I have been able to obtain a 6.75% return over the years, which I’m quite happy with considering the total lack of work involved from my end.

General_statistics___Bondora

If we take a look at the latest statistics on Bondora (the platform is very transparent about all the major stats, and that’s a very positive thing), we can see that the net average return is 10.6%, but that takes into consideration investors using other ways of investing on Bondora apart from Go & Grow, so it’s expected that the average return is higher than what I managed to achieve.

Bondora is a loan originator itself, so it’s different from other platforms like Mintos, which act as aggregators of loans (and loan originators).

The secondary market is reported to be quite illiquid, although I haven’t tried it myself as I’m happy to let my money grow slowly in the Go & Grow portfolio.

Another thing to keep in mind is that there are no buyback guarantees on loans, so if a loan gets delayed, you might have to wait a long time until it is eventually recovered.

On the other hand, this is one of the oldest platforms, and the chances of it going bankrupt seem pretty slim to me, and that’s a very positive thing. You will also see that the platform has an extremely high rating on Trustpilot, which wouldn’t be the case if it were a bad platform, especially since it has been in business for so many years and had plenty of time to prove its’ worth.

Bondora and Coronavirus

Many people are concerned about the impact of Coronavirus, and Bondora’s CEO has issued a statement about this to assure investors that all is well on Bondora’s end:

Hi!
I’m Pärtel Tomberg, CEO of Bondora.

Amid the recent spread of COVID-19, I want to share how the entire team of Bondora will continue to support you throughout these times of uncertainty, as well as in the future as things turn around.

First, some history. We launched Bondora 12 years ago on March 11th, 2008, in the midst of the financial crisis. Since then we have operated through severe recessions in Estonia, Finland and Spain.

Having grown Bondora through harsh economic circumstances, we are well prepared for this current environment. It’s in our DNA. The foundations of Bondora are built on five pillars:

1. 100% online. Our full range of services are online and our teams continue to work remotely over secure connections to support our customers across the world, no matter the circumstance.
2. Risk buffers. Within Go & Grow, all returns above 6.75%* p.a. serve as a risk-buffer. Our historic return is 10.7% p.a. (including recessions), the difference between the two is a reserve for you as our investor.
3. Strong diversification. There are over 125,000 personal loans in the Go & Grow portfolio with different loan lengths, customer segments and risk categories – all reducing your exposure to individual volatility.
4. Automated loan repayments. Our borrowers use an online interface where their repayments are processed automatically. If necessary, they can extend the loan schedules to adjust to their new financial circumstances.
5. Sustainability. Bondora has been profitable since 2017 and is well capitalized. We do not have cut back on any of our services, even if the situation were to persist.
We understand that your thoughts are first with your family and their wellbeing. We don’t want Bondora to be an additional source of concern, but instead to be a cornerstone of your financial prosperity throughout and after COVID-19. That is our commitment to you.

Wishing you good health and resilience,

Pärtel Tomberg

Pärtel has also recorded a video explaining the points above:

It is reassuring to see the CEO of a P2P lending speaking in a calm and collected manner about the way the company is handling the situation. It can easily be contrasted with the panicked and barely legible statements issued by other platforms who have already been forced to shed staff, freeze loan repayments and cut costs in other ways to survive.

This kind of statement gives me even more trust in Bondora. Situations like these really bring to light which are the good and bad platforms. I will therefore be reallocating more of my investments towards Bondora in the coming weeks.

I’ve also shared my own thoughts on how I think Coronavirus will impact the P2P lending market, so do check that out if you’re concerned about making an investment in the current conditions.

Join Bondora Go & Grow and get a €5 bonus

What are your thoughts on Bondora? Let me know in the comments section below. If you have any questions, do the same, it will help me prioritise your questions as I continue finishing up this article in the coming weeks. 

Further reading

  • How not to use Bondora
4.2

Summary

One of the oldest platforms in the P2P lending space, it has built a good reputation and provided solid results over the years for me.

Pros

  • Reputable platform
  • Secondary market
  • Various strategies can be used

Cons

  • Ugly graphics
  • Hard to navigate the UI in my opinion

Filed under: Money, P2P Lending

Related

About Jean Galea

Jean Galea is a dad, amateur padel player, host of the Mastermind.fm podcast, investor and entrepreneur.

Comments

  1. Jan van Laar says

    December 25, 2020 at 3:44 pm

    I would not recommend Bondora after being there with a total investment amount of EUR 65,000. In the beginning it looks all fine with net returns up to let’s say 15 to 20%. But over time you most likely see that you go down to around 3% (I’m at 2.79% now after 4 years). I have to be honest, in the beginning I selected manually my own loans (with very low risk) and those have been very profitable. But once you invest more and rely on re-investment of Bondora in their D, E, F, G categories, returns go down month by month. My best case scenario today is that I will get my initial investment back (EUR 29,000 to go) and seems totally unlikely for the moment. Just put your money in a bank account with zero interest, at least you don’t need to worry. Hope this helps some of you.

    Reply
  2. Tomas says

    August 23, 2020 at 1:54 pm

    Hi,

    Such a nice review ! I am heavily considering signing up with Bondora. Thanks for writing I had a question regarding buyback guarantees…. If there is no buyback guarantee does the company have to do anything to recover it for us ?? Or can they just let the loan be defaulted and move on

    Reply
  3. Bernard says

    March 16, 2020 at 11:19 am

    I was lured to your post by the title as I am considering investing in Bondora myself. I missed the “bad things people are saying” in the post itself. Can you elaborate?

    Reply
    • Jean Galea says

      March 16, 2020 at 7:40 pm

      You’re right I should have expanded on that. Will updated as soon as I have time, but the main criticisms are a high degree of loan defaults and low interest rates. But the issue with defaults is if you invest via auto invest, I haven’t had any problems with Go & Grow, although I had to settle for lower interest rates since they are safer investments. At this point I would only recommend that people invest with a Go&Grow strategy.

      Reply
  4. Centrino says

    March 16, 2020 at 11:04 am

    While I have you ‘on the line’, due to the current crisis situation, what would be your advise regarding loans on Mintos ?
    1- would you put the auto-invest temporarily in pause ? Or
    2- begin to withdraw some money from the platform ?

    Thank you in advance 🙂

    Reply
    • Jean Galea says

      March 16, 2020 at 11:13 am

      A separate post on the current situation will be published soon, hopefully I’ll have time to tidy it up and publish later today.

      Reply
      • Centrino says

        March 16, 2020 at 1:19 pm

        Yes, a communication would be great; because it is unclear to me what to do with my Mintos auto-invest 🙂 Regards,Alain

  5. Centrino says

    March 16, 2020 at 10:09 am

    Thank you Jean ‘

    About “there are no buyback guarantees on loans, so if a loan gets delayed, you might have to wait a long time until it is eventually recovered.”
    Which means that if the loan is never recovered, your money is lot ?
    Correct ?

    Reply
    • Jean Galea says

      March 16, 2020 at 10:15 am

      That is correct.

      Reply
      • Centrino says

        March 16, 2020 at 10:41 am

        Caramba… Very risk indeed.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Thanks for choosing to leave a comment. Please keep in mind that all comments are moderated according to our comment policy, and your email address will NOT be published. Please Do NOT use keywords or links in the name field.

Latest Padel Match

Jean Galea

Investor | Dad | Global Citizen | Athlete.

Follow @jeangalea

  • Padel
  • Affiliate Disclaimer
  • Cookies
  • Contact

Copyright © 2021 · Hosted at Kinsta · Built on the Genesis Framework