Category: P2P Lending | Page 5

🤔 Monethera Review 2020 – Serious Concerns about this P2P Lending Platform

Last updated: March 15, 202216 Comments

Here’s another platform that I don’t trust. When parting with my money for investment purposes, I always make sure that as far as I can see, the investment platform or opportunity checks out 100% and has no red flags.

To be clear, if I find just one red flag, I am not touching that investment.

That’s the case for Monethera. When I checked out this platform recently, I liked the overall design of the website but a recent change raised an important red flag.

I can’t comment on the quality of loans they offer or the people running the platform, because I stopped looking at the platform the moment I came across this buyback guarantee red flag.

Basically, late in December 2019, Monethera announced that they have a deal in place with a third party company, based in Hong Kong, that is willing to cover 95% of any bad loans on the platform.

[Read more…]

👎 Worst P2P Platforms in Europe – Platforms That I DON’T Trust

Last updated: November 28, 202436 Comments

I’ve written about what I consider to be the best P2P lending platforms at the moment for investing, however after the debacles on various other platforms during the past few months, people have been reaching out to me to ask about which platforms they should not trust.

I think it’s a good idea to list which platforms I actively avoid so you can do your research about them and potentially avoid them as well. I’ve had the idea to write this post for a long time but I originally wanted to write a longer post about each of these platforms to explain my reasoning. Until I have the time to do so, I’ll just list them and try to describe in a line or two why I don’t trust them.

Platforms that were in the original list and eventually went bust are marked with a strikethrough.

Lendermarket – many delayed loans, the non-fulfillment of the buyback guarantee, and blocking of withdrawals via pending payments.
EstateGuru – too many delayed loans, incompetent management
Nordstreet – complicated to link up your bank account; you need to first open a Paysera account.
Fast Invest – funded by an ICO and too much focus on the founder’s story, which I don’t find believable anyway.
Kviku – They don’t communicate with investors anymore and lots of loans pending.
Housers – no due diligence on their projects and a murky fee structure along with many loan projects that were never concluded. As close as a scam as you can get without technically being a scam. Currently being investigated by the police in Spain.
Bondster – Way too many defaults and no response from the team, seems to be going out of business soon.
Crowdestor – little due diligence done on projects, leadership does not inspire much confidence, clearly on a downward trend towards its eventual demise.
Quanloop – similar team to Bondkick – apparently a failed ICO project that did more or less the same thing that Quanloop is doing. I don’t have strong negative feelings against this platform, but it’s too early to recommend it.
~~Wisefund~~ – sparse information about the projects they are funding.
~~TFG Crowd~~ – Sparse info about the managing team as well as being based out of coworking spaces. Not a serious financial platform.
~~Iban Wallet~~ – Very shady details uncovered about the company. Stay away unless they come clean.
~~Dena Invest~~ – all the indications of a “me-too” scheme with owners having no relevant experience.
~~Grupeer~~ – people have provided evidence of scam practices by this platform, active lawsuits are underway and interest payments have been frozen.
~~Boldyield~~ – not convinced about their way of measuring LTV, and I’ve had negative experiences with a similar platform in the past (Lendy).
~~Monethera~~ – shady buyback guarantee.
~~Kuetzal~~ – seems to be a scam.
~~Envestio~~ – featured several dubious projects in the past, although things seem to be improving lately.
~~Agrikaab~~ – ridiculous and obvious scam.

Hopefully, I’ll have some time to write about the platforms mentioned above in more depth at a later stage, if they survive till then.

There are some other platforms that I don’t necessarily think have serious management problems or are scams, however, I do avoid them just the same as I don’t think it’s worth the time and hassle to invest in them.

Lenndy is one such example. They are small players in the business and show no signs of catching up with platforms like Mintos nor are they offering anything innovative compared to the top players. I, therefore, see no reason to invest in them.

Bondora is another platform that is hated on by many investors, however, I’ve gotten decent and stable results over the years, which is more than can be said about most of the platforms on this page.

Do you agree with my choices? Let me know if there are other platforms you actively avoid investing in and why.

The P2P Platform Graveyard

Several P2P lending companies have gone bust over the past years. Here’s a list of them:

BulkEstate (2024)
Viventor (2023)
IbanWallet (2023)
Wisefund (2022)
TFGCrowd (2022)
Dena Invest (2020)
Grupeer (2020)
Boldyield (2020)
Monethera (2020)
Envestio (2020)
Agrikaab (2020)
Kuetzal (2019)
FundingSecure (2019)
Lendy (2019)
Collateral UK (2018)

What’s your prediction for the next one to join the list?

So far I’ve lost money on Lendy. It was one of the first platforms I invested in, and since I didn’t know much about lending at the time, I luckily had the good sense to only invest a relatively small amount into the platform. It is now in administration and there is hope for some recovery of the debts, but I will lose part of my investment there. The owners of this platform sent millions of GBP to their accounts in the Marshall Islands and drove the company bankrupt. It’s one of the first big scams in P2P lending, and the fact that the platform was fully licensed in the UK should show us that being licensed does not mean that everything is rosy at a platform.

Overall the net result from investing in P2P lending platforms is still very positive, and that is what matters since we all know that these are relatively high-risk platforms in the first place, and there are bound to be borrower defaults, loan originators going bust and in some cases platforms themselves failing for myriad reasons.

The most important thing when you lose some money is to review what happened, understand what lessons can be learned, and move on. All investors lose money at some point, but as long as you’re right about your investments most of the time you will make money. It’s important to understand the concept of risk in investing and make peace with it right from the start.

Faced with the pain of losing money, many investors throw in the towel and write off investing altogether, but this is a mistake. As humans, we are wired to feel much worse about losing something than about gaining something, so you need to understand the psychology of risk and reward and push beyond it to continue learning and investing because it’s the only way to become a better investor and ultimately make serious money in the long run. Remember that if you’re not investing, your money is actually losing value due to the effects of inflation.

If you’re just starting and you’re feeling that the prospect of investing in P2P lending is daunting, you might want to check out my tips for evaluating P2P lending platforms as in that post I’ve shared all the lessons learned along the way and my criteria for deciding whether or not to invest in a platform.

A note on Trustpilot

Over the years I’ve come to understand that many new investors rely heavily on Trustpilot to formulate their decisions on whether to invest in a platform or not. By default, I don’t trust sites like this and would never rely on them to make up a decision.

I have looked at Trustpilot reviews a few times as some platforms proudly display their rating, but it turns out that several of them are clearly abusing the system. Basically, it consists in posting positive fake reviews while simultaneously taking down bad reviews.

I think the following video fully exposes the uselessness of Trustpilot as a review platform:

The Ultimate Guide to European P2P Lending in 2024

Last updated: September 26, 20248 Comments

p2p lending

P2P lending is an alternative investment that comes with its own risks but can provide high returns. I’ve been averaging around 12% across all the platforms I’ve invested in. Expect some portion of your loan portfolio to default at some point, it’s just the nature of this business, but this will usually be compensated by the profits you would have earned.

Here are a few of my favorite P2P lending investment platforms:

I’ve written extensively about this topic, so make sure you head over to my post on the best European peer to peer lending platforms for the range of options available.

P2P stands for Peer-to-Peer, and comes from the world of computing. It refers to a network setup that is not dependent on central coordination.

What some fintechs have essentially done is remove this central coordination from the lending process.

Meaning?

Borrowers and lenders are directly connected through a digital platform, with no traditional financial institution acting as a middleman. The result is the possibility for both sides to access better interest rates than it would be otherwise possible.

Yet, that can bring its own difficulties, since the lenders must actively assess the information available and decide on whether a particular investment is worthy of the risk.

On the other hand, some platforms work on the basis of a four-party model, introducing another player in the relationship: the loan originator, who essentially is responsible for bringing in the borrowers.

View the list of best P2P lending platforms

This can raise some additional concerns. If an outside party is selecting the borrowers and projects to be funded, doesn’t that introduce a new layer of unclarity? As well as what’s in it for them? Why should they care?

Loan originators put down some of their own money into the project, aligning their interests with those of investors. They now have a reason to care: if you lose, they lose.

The amount put down by the loan originator, therefore, becomes a kind of seal of approval, tying your and their results to get the best performance of that loan.

Sounds interesting? Check out my list of best European P2P platforms or read on to understand how these platforms work.

📜 The History of Peer-to-Peer Lending

The peer-to-peer technology concept was first popularised by music file-sharing networks such as Napster, eMule, and most recently torrents. What peer-to-peer means is that we’re removing the intermediary and regular people are sending files to other regular people.

Applied to peer-to-peer lending, it means that we are lending money to other people who need it for something specific. There is no need for a bank to get involved because the money is flowing directly from loan providers to the people requesting the loans.

The traditional way of getting loans was to go to a bank, describe why you needed the loan, show your assets and submit an application. You then had to wait days or weeks until you receive a decision from the bank. They would offer you the terms, including probably the most important factor which would be the interest rate.

After the financial crisis, many banks became much more restrictive in who they give loans to, especially in certain countries. This left a lot of people and businesses in dire straits as they had nowhere to go to in order to obtain much-needed capital to make important purchases or investments. This also created a situation where many investors in Western Europe (e.g. Germany, UK) were flush in cash, and on the other hand, you had people and businesses in Eastern Europe (e.g. Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia) who were suffering due to the difficulties in obtaining financing.

P2P platforms solved these problems by providing an alternative to banks. Investors now have no borders and can easily invest in loans outside of their countries at very good returns, because there is so much demand. In this way, everyone is a winner. The platforms themselves take a cut when loans are re-sold on the secondary market.

How P2P Platforms Link Investors and Borrowers

Typically you will see different kinds of loans, some with no guarantee and others with some kind of guarantee.

For example, if the loans you invest in have BuyBack guarantee, then the highest risk is for the P2P lending platform to go bankrupt, and that can happen because of many reasons – bad management decisions, competition or scam.

Peer-to-peer platforms service the loans and receive payments from the borrowers. Then the received payment is divided proportionally according to the amount of investment between all investors that have invested in the particular loan.

As soon as the borrower whose loan you have invested in repays his loan, you will start receiving payments of both the principal sum and the interest, for the investment period. They will be automatically transferred to your account. You can reinvest the received money in any available loans or request a payout directly to your personal bank account.

Each loan has a specific date of repayment, so the investor will receive money in his account according to the regularity of payments made by each particular borrower.

🤔 How Do P2P Lending Sites Make Money?

As investors, we should always be very careful about where we invest our money, because as Warren Buffet likes to say:

“The first rule about investing is not to lose money”

Therefore, one of the things I always ask myself when someone offers me some opportunity, is:

“What’s in it for them?

We can, therefore, apply this question to the European P2P lending platforms that we’ve been talking about. How do they make money and what’s the role of all the parties involved in this business?

As we kn0w by now, P2P lending companies or platforms are the intermediaries between l

While in the early days, platforms charged fees to both lenders and borrowers; nowadays I’ve yet to come across a platform that charges any fees to investors/lenders, except on withdrawals or currency conversions. It is simply not good to do so from a marketing point of view. The platforms are better off offering slightly lower rates and thus making money off investors from the spread between the interest rate offered to the borrower and the rate that they offer to the lenders.

Some P2P lending platforms charge flat fees to borrowers. This is is especially true for bigger loans such as business loans that run into high thousands of euros.

For consumer loans, the lending platforms tend to simply charge a margin in interest percentage (they will charge the borrower an interest rate of 25%, while giving a rate of 15% to the lender and keeping the remaining 10% for themselves).

📈 Is P2P Lending Growing in Europe?

P2P lending volume is growing year on year in Europe and globally. The growth is quite obvious to those of us who have been investing in P2P lending for the past five years or so.

P2P lending platform market data

There are three sources that I refer to when it comes to market data for P2P lending platforms and the P2P market in general:

You can usually also find information on each p2p lending platform’s website. If they don’t publicly display this kind of data, I would be inclined to trust them significantly less than if they did.

It’s very important to keep tabs on such data to understand what volumes each platform is generating and whether they are profitable or not.

P2P lending is growing at an incredible rate in Europe and around the world. According to a Mintos statement, the world’s P2P lending market was 26.16 billion USD in 2015, but growth is projected to reach 897.85 billion USD by 2024. If this vision were to come true, the annual growth would be 48.2% in 2016-24, which is nothing short of spectacular.

When we talk about growth, we need to consider both the actual lending volumes and also the confidence and comfort of investors when considering this asset class for investment.

According to a survey by Robo.cash, 64.9 percent of European P2P investors have full confidence in P2P lending. Remarkably, 52.3 percent of the respondents mentioned that P2P loans take a considerable share of their investment portfolio – over 25 percent.

The level of confidence in P2P lending is also observed in the distribution of funds in investment portfolios. It’s no secret that most investors look for diversification by investing in various assets – stocks, bonds, cryptocurrencies etc. It’s quite telling, then, that 52.3 percent of respondents said that investments in P2P loans take more than 25 percent of their portfolios.

While it is a newer class of investment, there is no doubt that it is growing at an increasingly rapid rate, so it’s well worth understanding how things work, even if you’re skeptical at the outset.

💶 What Returns Can You Expect from Peer-to-Peer Lending?

I think peer-to-peer lending sites are one of the best ways to earn passive income. The vast majority of investors are accustomed to using real estate for (mostly) passive income, but in my experience P2P lending can produce better returns while being more passive than real estate.

I’ve been averaging 11% returns per year over the past two years over the various platforms I’ve used.

A common question I receive is about how much return is considered as the minimum acceptable.

My answer is that it is an ever-shifting minimum interest rate. What you want to do is compare any investment return with the risk-free interest rate.

The risk-free rate of return is the theoretical rate of return of an investment with zero risk. It represents the interest an investor would expect from an absolutely risk-free investment over a specified period of time. In theory, the risk-free rate is the minimum return an investor expects for any investment because he will not accept additional risk unless the potential rate of return is greater than the risk-free rate.

In practice, however, the risk-free rate does not exist because even the safest investments carry a very small amount of risk. Thus, the interest rate on a three-month U.S. Treasury bill is often used as the risk-free rate for U.S.-based investors.

At the moment it hovers around the 2.5% figure, so based on that and the risk of loan platforms (note that some carry much more risk than others), I would be looking for anywhere between 9 to 20%.

Let’s have a look at some of the best loan platforms in Europe, based on my experience investing over the past 4 years.

🌍 Who Can Invest in P2P Lending Sites?

European P2P lending sites are open to all European investors, possibly even those outside of Europe in some cases.

The UK-based platforms are typically restricted to investors resident in the UK. CrowdProperty is one such example. It’s been around since 2005 but is restricted to UK-based investors.

The majority of platforms that are open to other countries are based in the Baltic countries. We have leaders such as Mintos and Bondora which have proven to be success stories, and now many other new entrants are fighting to get a piece of the pie.

Many of these platforms are available in more than one language, precisely to cater for the fact that in Europe people speak so many different languages and might not be comfortable investing their money if the site is only available in English. For example, my favorite lending site, Mintos, is available in English, Czech, Spanish, German, Latvian, Polish and Russian.

From my experience, at the moment in Europe the country with the most investors in P2P lending is Germany, leading by a long margin. German investors love P2P platforms. Germany is a country where people have a high purchasing power and they are looking for good returns on their savings, and hence P2P lending platforms are a great match for them.

How to Diversify Across Several P2P Lending Platforms

Diversification is one of the basic tenets of investment, and in general, it’s a good idea to invest.

Rich and successful investors typically diversify across the following:

Stocks and bonds
Real estate
Ownership of businesses

Others might diversify further into commodities, cryptocurrencies, peer-to-peer loans, precious metals, etc. but the above three are the really big ones.

On this blog, I’ve written quite a bit about the high returns that can be obtained on P2P loan platforms, and if you read other European FIRE and finance blogs you will see that platforms like Mintos and Peerberry are all the rage at the moment.

A frequent question that new investors have is the following:

“Should you diversify your investment across many P2P loan platforms?”

Now, if you read some other blogs you will see that these bloggers keep investing in new platforms, claiming that they want to try out more platforms for the benefit of their readers.

However, you should be aware that keeping a handle on your investments is a time-consuming task, and is exponentially more time consuming the more platforms you add.

How to invest €10,000 in P2P Lending

I would, therefore, be of the opinion that you should select a maximum of 5 platforms to invest in, and preferably only if you have a substantial amount to invest, say €100,000. For smaller amounts I would say just start with one platform, and once you learn how things work to expand into two others.

If I had €10,000 I would only put it on one platform, and that platform would be Mintos.

If I had €25,000 I would spread it across 2 or a maximum of three platforms. They would probably be Mintos, and Bulkestate/Peerberry.

Keep in mind that your reporting and tax compliance costs will also increase with each platform you add. At the end of the year, you will most likely engage an accountant to help you prepare your personal tax return, and the accountant will bill you according to the time spent. He will most definitely spend more time on your tax declaration with every platform you add.

If you’re investing through an audited company, every platform you invest money in (irrespective of the amounts invested) will increase the cost of your audit, as the auditors will need to spend time getting to know the platform and performing impairment checks on the loans invested in. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense to invest small amounts in any platform as the audit cost per platform might actually be higher than the expected returns.

If you see bloggers that are invested in more than 10 platforms, you can be pretty sure that the main reason they are doing so is to be able to review all those platforms and land more affiliate commissions from new investors, especially from their monthly reports, where they can land several affiliate clicks and hence affiliate commission.

The aim of these bloggers is, therefore, to make money through affiliate commissions and not from the investments themselves. The potential returns from affiliate commissions are many times the multiple of what they can get from the interest on their meager investments, hence it justifies the long hours spent every month in compiling detailed reports and regular reviews of all these platforms.

Risks of P2P Lending

For each investment class, and indeed every investment you make, you need to carefully consider the risks involved. There’s a lot to say about the safety of P2P lending and what risks you need to consider, so I wrote a separate guide on whether P2P lending can be considered safe that you should find interesting.

Alternatives to P2P Lending

If, like myself, you want to diversify beyond P2P lending, I would suggest you read up on real estate crowdfunding platforms as well as crypto interest accounts. You can obtain similar rates of return (usually 3-4% less than P2P lending) but these other types of investors tend to be safer as they involve collateral.

Questions?

Do you have any questions about peer-to-peer lending? I have been active as an investor in the space for the past 5 years and have learned a lot through experience and interviewing some of the people behind the top platforms on my podcast Mastermind.fm.

I believe that questions and discussions are the best way to learn, so I welcome all your questions and will do my best to give you an answer that is helpful. Please go ahead and leave questions in the comments section below rather than sending me an email. In this way, your question and my answer will benefit all the readers.

P2P Lending Glossary

Last updated: March 16, 20205 Comments

On this P2P lending glossary page you’ll find all the important terms you’ll encounter as an investor in P2P lending platforms around the world, with Mintos being my favorite platform. If there are any other terms I missed out on, let me know and I’ll add them in.

AML – Anti-Money Laundering. It refers to a number of policies that governments, banks, and financial institutions have to abide by. They are obligated to proactively monitor clients and new customers so corruption and money laundry can be prevented. They also have to report any kind of financial crime. When you as an investor are asked to supply picture id, address id and documentation on where the funds you are investing are coming from by e.g. supplying bank statements and copies of your paychecks, this is part of the AML procedures.

Annuity Type Loan – a loan in which both the loan interest and the principal will be paid periodically

Auto Invest – a tool for automated purchases of Claims on the Platform, functioning according to the User’s selected settings and used by the User to purchase Claims on his/her own behalf in accordance with the selected settings.

Borrower – a natural person or legal entity, wherewith the Loan Originator has concluded a Loan Agreement

Borrower APR – Annual Percentage Rate (APR) is the cost of credit as a yearly rate. It is designed to accurately disclose the true cost of credit and provide a standard basis of comparison for the costs of credit.

Bridge Loan – a short-term loan used until permanent financing is secured, or current obligations met. It provides immediate cash flow required to achieve a specific target, such as enhancing the value of the property or selling the underlying asset

Bullet Type Loan – a loan in which the loan interest will be paid periodically, with the principal amount being paid at the end of the loan period

Business Loan – a loan used to cover day-to-day expenses of the firm, acquisition of goods or equipment, business expansion, pending obligations, etc.

Buyback Guarantee – a buyback guarantee is a guarantee usually issued by the loan originator to the investor for a particular loan, that confirms the loan originator will repurchase the loan from the investor if that particular loan is delayed by more than a particular number of days, typically 60 days.

Cash Drag – money sitting in your P2P lending account that is not being lent. This is usually due to the platform not being able to offer any loans that match your Auto Invest criteria.

Crowdfunding – financing a project through a crowd of people instead of the traditional route of bank loans.

Crowdlending – a form of investment in which a group of people lend money to individuals or companies in exchange for interest, usually through an online platform.

Default rate / Delinquency Rate – the ratio between the value of defaulted loans and the value of the total loan portfolio.

Development Loan – a loan used to finance the construction or planning process of a project

First ranking mortgage – A lender of a first ranking mortgage is the lender that has the first right to proceeds from the forced sale of the property.

Full Bullet Type Loan – a loan in which both the interest and the principal will be paid at the end of the loan period

Installment Loan – a loan that is repaid through a set number of scheduled payments or installments; the minimum number of payments is usually limited to two. The loan term may last between a few months to 30 years.

Invoice Financing (also factoring) – a way for businesses to borrow money against the amounts due from customers’ invoices. When a business sells a product or service to a customer or another business, it often happens on credit in the form of an invoice with a number of days until the amount owed is due.

KYC – Know Your Customer, alternatively known as know your client or simply KYC, is the process of a business verifying the identity of its clients and assessing their suitability, along with the potential risks of illegal intentions towards the business relationship.

Loan Agreement – a loan, lease, credit agreement or a financial arrangement of different nature concluded between the Loan Originator and the Borrower.

Loan Originator – a lending company which is the Creditor, who, in compliance with the co-operation agreement concluded between the Creditor and the Platform, has authorized the Platform to transfer the Loan Originator’s Claims towards the Borrower, by using the Platform, and on behalf of the Creditor, to take other steps prescribed in the Agreement and in the Assignment Agreement.

Loan-to-Value (LTV) – refers to a ratio between a loan amount and the collateral’s market value. An LTV ratio of 50% would mean that collateral’s value is twice that of the loan.

Payday Loan – a small, short-term unsecured loan which is sometimes referred to as a “cash advance”. Payday loans require the consumer to have a previous payroll or income, employment records, and a checking account. The repayment of these loans is not necessarily linked to the borrower’s payday.

Primary market – market in which we investors purchase loans or shares from the platform or loan originator.

Principal – the amount of money you originally put into your investment and now earn interest on in return. When you borrow money, it refers to the amount of money you borrow, excluding interest payments and fees.

Reverse Auction – In a conventional auction each bidder makes an individual judgement on how much the item is worth to them and bids up to that limit. The item is then won by the person who valuers it highest. In a conventional auction items usually go for above the reserve price; that’s kind of the point. So in a reverse auction for a loan each lender decides the minimum rate they are willing to accept from that borrower and the loan is funded by the lender(s) who are prepared to lend at the lowest rate.

ROI – Return on investment (ROI) is a financial metric used to analyze the efficiency of an investment. ROI = profit from an investment / investment cost, and is usually expressed as a percentage.

Secondary market – a facility that enables investors to trade loans between themselves. The secondary provides a mechanism to quickly sell your shares or loans for quick liquidity, and also provides a place to grab some good deals, since other investors might be offering shares or loans at a discount in order to achieve quick liquidity.

SEPA transfer – short for Single Euro Payments Area. It’s the newest format for cross-border Euro bank transfers. SEPA aims to make cross-border Euro transfers within this area equivalent to a domestic transfer within your own country. You should always use SEPA if available over wire transfers as they are faster and cheaper.

XIRR – a financial function that returns the internal rate of return (IRR) for a series of cash flows that occur at irregular intervals. It is commonly found in spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft Excel.

🔥 Mintos Review 2024 – My Results in 6 Years and Over €150,000 Invested

Last updated: November 26, 202495 Comments

Open a Mintos account

Mintos is a peer-to-peer lending platform in Europe. Like many other FinTech companies of this type, it is based in the Baltic region; in Latvia specifically.

Currently, Mintos has four offices employing more than 160 people in Riga, Vilnius, Berlin and Warsaw.

Mintos started operating in 2015 but has experienced rapid growth due to getting many things right and becoming popular with financial bloggers due to its ease of use and transparency.

The average interest rate is around 12%, with close to 500,000+ investors registered worldwide and 600m euros under administration.

Another important statistic to look at is the loan book growth, and here again, Mintos is doing very well as can be seen in the following screenshot.

The total money invested so far is higher than 8 billion Euros, which is a staggering number for such a young platform. There is no doubt that Mintos is the biggest player in P2P lending in Europe at the moment, with over 50% market share of the total p2p lending market. There are some good competitors, but none of them provide the security and track record that Mintos does.

The management team of Mintos is clearly displayed on the website with links to the Linkedin profiles of each person on the team. Mintos is currently the biggest employer in the P2P lending space.

Being able to view the team and also check out various YouTube videos with their CEO Martins Sulte enhances the feeling of transparency and peace of mind. I am one of those who take a look at these pages on a website and use them when judging whether I should invest on a platform or not. Everything counts.

I have personally interviewed Martins on my podcast Mastermind.fm, so be sure to check out that episode if you like podcasts.

Mintos is a platform that is in line with EU law, so when you invest you won’t have any trouble with your accountant or tax authorities back home in terms of explaining what you are doing.

Finally and very importantly, Mintos as a company is profitable, so they are not only running on investor money but are actually turning a profit, which means that they have a much higher chance of standing the test of time compared to some other competitors that are still in startup mode.

The biggest number of investors come from Germany, Spain and the Czech Republic respectively, but this is mostly a reflection of those countries’ familiarity with this type of investing. There are more than 340,000 investors that have used Mintos and they come from 90+ countries.

More than 60 lending companies offer their loans on the Mintos platform, with over 25,000 people working at these companies and spread over 33 countries, so you can have a global reach when investing on Mintos.

The company supports 10 languages via its multilingual support team, while the website is available in 6 languages and there are loans available in 10 currencies.