
Most P2P lending platforms fund consumer debt or property. InSoil Finance funds farms. It’s an immediately interesting idea: secured agricultural loans across five European countries, backed by farmland and heavy machinery, with a side bet on carbon credits. If you care about where your money goes — and you want returns in double digits — that pitch is hard to ignore.
The tension is that the advertised 13% returns and the real-world returns are not the same number. Independent analysis puts the actual portfolio yield closer to 4.5% once delinquencies and slow recoveries are factored in. That gap is the story, and it’s worth understanding before you put a cent in.
This is a research-based review. I haven’t personally invested in InSoil, but I’ve pulled together data from the platform itself, regulatory filings, independent analyst reports, and community sentiment scores to give you an honest picture.
InSoil at a Glance
| Founded | June 2020 (Vilnius, Lithuania) |
| Rebranded | April 2025 (from HeavyFinance) |
| Regulation | ECSP licensed, Bank of Lithuania (July 2023) |
| Asset class | Agricultural loans (secured) |
| Countries | Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Bulgaria |
| Total funded | EUR 101.5M+ |
| Advertised returns | ~13% weighted average |
| Estimated real returns | ~4.5% (BeyondP2P analysis) |
| Minimum investment | EUR 100 |
| Buyback guarantee | No |
| Secondary market | Yes (1% fee, limited liquidity) |
| Auto-invest | Yes (basic) |
| Current bonus | 2% cashback on investments in first 30 days |
| Website | finance.insoil.com |
The Agricultural Niche: Genuinely Interesting
InSoil was founded in 2020 by Laimonas Noreika, who previously co-founded FinBee, one of Lithuania’s better-known consumer P2P platforms. The agricultural focus wasn’t an accident — European farms are chronically underfunded by traditional banks, especially smaller family operations that don’t fit neat credit boxes. InSoil built a business around filling that gap.
The platform operates in Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, and Bulgaria. That geographic spread matters because agricultural credit risk varies significantly by country, crop type, and local land values. A diversified portfolio across these markets isn’t just marketing — it’s a meaningful risk mitigation tool, assuming the underlying loans perform.
About 85% of loans are secured by either farmland or heavy machinery (tractors, harvesters, sprayers). The collateral model gives the platform a genuine recovery mechanism that unsecured consumer lenders simply don’t have. When a farmer defaults, there’s an asset to pursue. The question — which we’ll get to — is how long that recovery actually takes.
Loan Types
There are two main products on the platform:
- Standard agricultural loans: Medium-term secured loans to farmers, typically carrying interest rates in the 10–14% range. These form the bulk of the portfolio. Collateral is either land (around 40% of loans) or heavy machinery (around 50%), with other assets covering the remainder.
- Green Loans: 0% interest loans where the farmer’s obligation isn’t interest — it’s carbon. Investors earn through revenue sharing on carbon credits generated by the farm’s shift to regenerative practices. Investors receive 60% of carbon credit sales during the loan term, and 40% for one additional year after repayment.
The Green Loan concept is structurally creative. Farmers get cheap capital; investors get exposure to the carbon credit market without needing to navigate it directly. Whether it works in practice is a separate question (more on that below).
The Collateral Model
InSoil’s collateral-first approach is one of its genuine strengths compared to unsecured consumer P2P. When a borrower defaults, the platform pursues recovery through asset seizure and sale. According to platform data, no loans have been written off at a total loss — the collateral has always covered something.
The problem is speed. Recovery takes an average of 250 days. For a platform with a meaningful delinquency rate, that’s a lot of capital sitting idle — collecting no returns, tied up in legal and recovery processes, and dragging down your actual annualised yield. Strong collateral protects your principal over a long enough time horizon. It does not protect your returns in the short term.
Green Loans and Carbon Credits: The Promise vs. the Reality
The Green Loan product is InSoil’s most distinctive feature and the centrepiece of the April 2025 rebrand. The new name, the new identity, the EUR 50M sustainability fund backed by the European Investment Fund — it all points to InSoil positioning itself as a climate-finance company, not just a farm lender.
On paper, the upside is compelling. The platform’s own projections show a conservative scenario of 12%+ returns and an optimistic scenario above 50%, depending on carbon credit prices and farm performance. InSoil also signed a EUR 100M agreement with Canadian climate investor Key Carbon to fund green farm loans, which signals institutional confidence in the model.
The problem is that there’s no public evidence yet of carbon credit distributions reaching retail investors. The programme launched in early 2023. As of early 2026, independent reviewers have not found verified payout data from retail investor accounts. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen — carbon credit issuance has long lead times — but it does mean you’re investing in a model that remains unproven at the investor level.
If you’re attracted to InSoil specifically for the green loan angle, go in with your eyes open. The thesis is sound. The execution timeline is unclear.
The Returns Reality
This is where the review gets uncomfortable.
InSoil advertises a weighted average return of approximately 13%. That’s the gross interest rate on performing loans. It does not account for delayed payments, defaults, or the time cost of recovery.
BeyondP2P’s independent analysis of the InSoil portfolio estimates the actual net APY at around 4.5% after factoring in a delinquency rate of approximately 20% and an average recovery period of 250 days. That’s not a minor haircut — it’s the difference between a genuinely competitive return and something you could get from a savings account with far less complexity.
InSoil itself has acknowledged elevated delinquency levels, particularly in Poland and Portugal. The platform points to agricultural volatility, rising input costs, and post-COVID disruptions as contributing factors. Those explanations are plausible. They don’t change what investors are earning.
There’s also a structural incentive worth noting: around 23% of InSoil’s revenue comes from late-loan administration fees. The platform earns money when loans are overdue. That’s not a conspiracy — it’s a common model — but it does mean the platform’s financial interests don’t perfectly align with investors’ interests in fast recoveries.
The Institutional vs. Retail Gap
InSoil’s EUR 50M fund, anchored by the European Investment Fund (EIF), operates with a portfolio guarantee and strict loan eligibility criteria. Loans that qualify for the fund get EIF backing. Loans that don’t — or that don’t meet the eligibility criteria — flow to the retail platform.
The implication is that the EIF’s best-quality loan requirements effectively direct higher-quality assets toward institutional capital, while retail investors get what’s left. This is not unique to InSoil — it’s a pattern across the P2P industry — but it’s worth being explicit about. Institutional investors in this fund have protections and access that retail investors on finance.insoil.com do not.
Platform Features
The platform is functional but not particularly sophisticated compared to the larger P2P players in Europe. Auto-invest is available but basic — you set parameters and it deploys capital, but the customisation options are limited relative to what you’d find on Mintos or similar platforms. A secondary market exists with a 1% fee, but liquidity is limited, so don’t count on being able to exit quickly if you need the cash.
The minimum investment of EUR 100 per loan is higher than many competitors, which affects how broadly you can diversify a smaller portfolio. With EUR 1,000, you’re spreading across a maximum of 10 loans. That’s workable, but not ideal for a portfolio with non-trivial delinquency exposure.
Company Finances
InSoil turned profitable in 2023 with a net profit of EUR 375K, reversing a EUR 1.1M loss in 2022. That trajectory is positive. The company is VC-backed by Practica Capital and Startup Wise Guys, both credible early-stage investors in the Baltic tech ecosystem. The EIF partnership provides institutional credibility and co-funding that most small P2P platforms can’t access.
The ECSP license from the Bank of Lithuania (July 2023) puts InSoil under a consistent European regulatory framework — the same regime that governs crowdfunding platforms across the EU. That’s a meaningful baseline of investor protection, even if it doesn’t guarantee returns or prevent losses.
What InSoil Gets Right
- Unique asset class: No other mainstream European P2P platform focuses exclusively on agricultural lending. For investors who want genuine diversification away from consumer and real estate debt, that’s valuable.
- Secured loans: 85% of loans backed by land or machinery. No total write-offs to date, which is a real data point.
- Regulatory standing: ECSP licensed, profitable, VC-backed, EIF-partnered. The institutional infrastructure is credible.
- Green Loan concept: If the carbon credit model delivers, it’s a genuinely novel product for retail investors. The idea is good even if the proof is still pending.
- Current bonus: 2% cashback on investments in the first 30 days softens the entry cost.
What to Watch Out For
- The returns gap: Advertised 13% vs. estimated 4.5% actual. That’s the central risk — and it’s not a technicality.
- Delinquency rate: Around 20% of the portfolio is delayed or in recovery. Recovery is slow at ~250 days on average.
- No buyback guarantee: Unlike many competing platforms, there’s no skin-in-the-game safety net from loan originators.
- Limited secondary market liquidity: If you need to exit, you may wait.
- Carbon credit timeline: Green Loans haven’t demonstrably paid out to retail investors yet. The model is unproven at the distribution level.
- Institutional priority: Best-quality loans may flow to EIF-backed vehicles, not the retail platform.
- Late-fee revenue model: 23% of platform revenue from late-loan admin fees creates a misaligned incentive.
- Community sentiment: InSoil ranks 26th out of 30 platforms in independent community scoring, with a declining score of 2.38. That reflects real investor frustration, not just academic risk assessment.
How It Compares
If you’re comparing InSoil against the broader European P2P landscape, check out my full guide to the best P2P lending platforms in Europe. LANDE is the closest competitor in the agricultural niche, and it has a stronger recent track record on delinquencies. Platforms like Nectaro and ViaInvest offer comparable or higher returns with lower default rates, though they operate in entirely different sectors.
InSoil’s niche is genuinely its own. The comparison isn’t really about finding an identical alternative — it’s about whether the unique positioning justifies the additional risk and complexity.
Verdict
InSoil is doing something legitimately interesting. Agricultural lending, carbon credit exposure, and a genuine sustainability mission — that’s a more compelling story than another generic consumer loan platform. The regulatory standing, institutional backing, and collateral model give it a credible foundation.
But the returns data is hard to overlook. A 13% advertised return that analysts estimate is delivering 4.5% net — alongside a 20% delinquency rate and a 250-day average recovery timeline — means InSoil is currently a more complex and risky investment than its marketing suggests. The community sentiment ranking (26th of 30, and declining) reflects what investors who are already in it are saying.
If the delinquency rates normalise and the carbon credit distributions start reaching retail investors, this platform could become meaningfully more attractive. Right now, the story is better than the numbers.
I’d say: watch this one, but don’t lead with it. If you want to allocate a small slice of a diversified P2P portfolio to the agricultural sector and you can accept below-expectation returns while the model matures, InSoil deserves a look. If you’re chasing the 13% headline, you’re likely to be disappointed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is InSoil Finance the same as HeavyFinance?
Yes. HeavyFinance rebranded to InSoil in April 2025. The investment platform operates at finance.insoil.com. The underlying business, regulation, and loan portfolio are the same — the rebrand reflects a strategic shift toward positioning the company as a climate-finance platform focused on regenerative agriculture.
Is InSoil Finance regulated?
Yes. InSoil holds an ECSP (European Crowdfunding Service Provider) licence from the Bank of Lithuania, granted in July 2023. This puts it under EU-wide crowdfunding regulations with consistent investor protection standards across member states.
What returns can I realistically expect from InSoil?
InSoil advertises a weighted average return of around 13%. Independent analysis from BeyondP2P estimates actual net returns closer to 4.5% once delinquency rates and recovery timelines are factored in. Your individual result will depend on which loans you’re in and whether delayed borrowers eventually repay.
Does InSoil have a buyback guarantee?
No. InSoil does not offer a buyback guarantee. Loans are secured by collateral (farmland or machinery), which provides a recovery mechanism, but there is no automatic repurchase of defaulted loans. Recovery can take up to 250 days on average.
What are Green Loans on InSoil?
Green Loans are 0% interest loans to farmers who commit to regenerative agricultural practices. Instead of paying interest, borrowers repay through carbon credits generated on their land. Investors receive 60% of carbon credit revenues during the loan term and 40% for one year after repayment. The concept is novel but as of early 2026 there is limited public evidence of carbon credit distributions reaching retail investors.
What is the minimum investment on InSoil Finance?
The minimum investment per loan is EUR 100.
Can I sell my loans early on InSoil?
Yes, through the secondary market, subject to a 1% fee. Liquidity on the secondary market is limited, so exit timing is not guaranteed. This is not a platform for investors who may need short-notice access to their capital.

Leave a Reply