The table lists the loan originations of p2p lending marketplaces for last month. Funding Circle leads ahead of Zopa and Ratesetter. The total volume for the reported marketplaces adds up to 573 million Euro. I track the development of p2p lending volumes for many markets. Since I already have most of the data on file, I can publish statistics on the monthly loan originations for selected p2p lending services.
Funding Circle reaches the milestone of 3 billion GBP loans originated since launch.
I removed Comunitae, because of the stop due the fraud case.
Table: P2P Lending Volumes in November 2017. Source: own research
Note that volumes have been converted from local currency to Euro for the purpose of comparison. Some figures are estimates/approximations. *Prosper and Lending Club no longer publish origination data for the most recent month.
Spanish platform Comunitae has stopped operations indefinitely due to fraud. Several SMEs hat placed fraudulent offers on the marketplaces. The management says this was helped by inside fraud and they have expelled a risk analyst and initiated legal action.
Comunitae was founded in 2008. The problem was detected this October. While no figure of the monetary damage was given, management says the default level caused was to high to continue as investor demand dwindled.
FinBee, a Lithuania based p2p lending platform, has started to expand internationally by launching in the Czech Republic. By 2020, FinBee plans to begin operations in another two European countries.
FinBee will provide personal lending services for residents of the Czech Republic as well as for investors from across the entire European Union. The company expects that during the first year of operation, 50M CZK (1.94M EUR ) will be distributed via the platform.
The Czech Republic’s business environment, as well as the possibility to launch with experienced local teams, were among the main reasons to launch in this Central European state, CEO of FinBee Laimonas Noreika said. Payday loan companies offering loans with high interest rates play a significant role in the Czech consumer lending market. Noreika emphasized that borrowers are looking for opportunities to refinance expensive loans.
“We are launching in the Czech Republic to provide competitive interest rates for Czech borrowers,†he said. “In other words, by borrowing for less and paying lower monthly instalments, customers will be able to repay expensive payday loans. We see a growth potential here.â€
According to Noreika, one of the main challenges in the Czech market will be borrower credit risk evaluation. In the Czech Republic, there is no centralized credit rating agency or government-issued database for credit risk evaluation. Therefore, this needs to be manually extracted from several sources.
“Our historical interest rate of 21 percent, and our NPL rate of 4.9 percent are some of the best among European P2P platforms. We are very committed to maintaining these results. Therefore, solvent borrower selection will be our utmost priority in the Czech Republic.â€
FinBee provides services to borrowers and investors in Lithuania and the Czech Republic. The company started operating in Lithuania in 2015.
Wow, 5 years have passed since I first started to invest into p2p lending at Bondora in October 2012. I periodically review my experiences in this blog – you can read my last update here. Over the total time I did deposit 14,000 Euro and withdrew 17,800 Euro. So over time I withdrew more than I ever deposited, meaning 3,800 Euro realized profit. Even better: I still have 604 loans in my Bondora portfolio with an outstanding principal of 7,467 Euro at an average interest rate of 23.78%. Of these 2,746 Euro are in current loans, 778 Euro in overdue loans and 3,941 Euro in 60+ days overdue loans. Some of this very overdue loans do in fact make very regular monthly payments, albeit smaller than the planned payments in the original payment schedule – it will take much longer for the loan to be repaid. And of course many of my red loans are duds, which haven’t made a single repayment and it is unlikely any recovery will be achieved. There is 43 Euro cash in the account.
Bondora shows a net return of 19.0% for my portfolio. In my own calculations, using XIRR in Excel, assuming that 30% of my 60+days overdue and 15% of my overdue loans will not be recovered, my ROI calculations result in 17.2% return. Even if I assume total loss on all outstanding loans that are 60+days overdue my ROI calculation results in 15.6%
Let’s look how my remaining portfolio is distributed by several criteria
Chart 1: My portfolio by country; majority in Estonian loans, remainder in Finnish loans
Chart 2: My portfolio by rating: more than half of the amount in B and C rated loans, large portions also in A and D ratings
Current situation at Bondora
New investors cannot expect to achieve similar yields. Interest rates are much lower now than when I started and I achieved a portion of my profit by trading loans on the secondary market at premium. If you want to start on the Bondora p2p lending marketplace now, consider using the Portfolio Pro autoinvest set to Estonian loans only with AA to B (or C) credit grades. Maybe try some Finnish loans with better credit grades too.
Bondora originates roughly 3 million Euro new loans per month. There is no cash drag, usually available amounts get invested very fast.
Chart 3: Cumulative all time development of my portfolio by credit grades 2012-2017. Remember I only deposited 14,000 Euro. The high 76,698 Euro given as total investment is a result of reinvestments and active buying and selling of loans.
The Crowdproperty marketplace was launched in 2014 and the company has since funded 10.7 million GBP in property loans. All loans are secured by a first legal charge against the property. The company says no investor has incurred any losses so far. The company received full FCA authorization in October 2017.
Crowdproperty states it has unique proprietary access to the largest property network in the UK, the Property Investors Network (pin), which provides competitive advantage in terms of high quality deal origination and has enabled the proof of the business with limited marketing investment to date.
Crowdproperty claims that it’ is already profitable with more favourable economics than peer to peer platforms in consumer and SME marketplaces owing to shorter average loan lengths, higher average loan sizes, borrower frequency/retention and achievability/sustainability of fee levels. With a gulf now emerging between property-based peer to peer lenders that are gaining traction versus those struggling at the sub-£5m level, the team aims to become the market leader in project-based finance direct to SME property professionals whilst simultaneously providing competitive first-charge secured returns to its retail pool of lenders. ‘
CEO Simon Zutschi told P2P-Banking: ‘I am delighted that we have now proven this model of helping successful property developers to fund their projects, whilst helping investors gain a secured return on their money. All of the recent project launches have been quickly funded up by our eager and loyal base of lenders, which clearly demonstrates the traction we have built in our brand. Over the last year, we have focused on our platform technology and processes, and now we are ready to scale this business to its full potential. This will not only benefit our lenders, but also help and support SME developers, who often struggle to raise funds from hesitant banks, to access the essential funding they need to help reduce the UK housing crisis’.
This p2p lending statistic contains the loan originations of p2p lending companies for last month. Funding Circle leads ahead of Zopa and Ratesetter. The total volume for the reported marketplaces adds up to 539 million Euro. I track the development of p2p lending volumes for many markets. Since I already have most of the data on file, I can publish statistics on the monthly loan originations for selected p2p lending services.
Thincats reached the milestone of 250 million GBP loans originated since launch.
Table: P2P Lending Volumes in October 2017. Source: own research
Note that volumes have been converted from local currency to Euro for the purpose of comparison. Some figures are estimates/approximations. *Prosper and Lending Club no longer publish origination data for the most recent month.
