Hello and Happy New Year everyone,
The last month of the year was eventful, to say the least, in the world of p2p lending with some alarming (again, to say the least), signs from Kuetzal. We will get to it on the “Kuetzal” segment of this post.
I also added 300€ to Lendermarket. This platform looks very compelling to me so I will probably re-balance some of my portfolio which is Mintos heavy and add more to Lendermarket.
Mintos
Mintos added a new feature on the Dashboard called “Pending Payments” this month. These are the funds from loans that have been paid back by the borrower but not yet transferred to Mintos. This is not good for investors because while the funds are in “Pending Payment” status, they do not earn interest. During the holidays I had as much as 100€ stuck there. I don’t know how this will impact real earnings but it doesn’t look good on paper.
This month I earned €47.40 from Mintos. This is a 0.91% monthly yield and a 12.06% annual compounded yield. These results are less than anticipated probably because of the new pending payment feature. Also, Finko and Sun Finance cashback campaign is in effect until January 10. It gives you a 0.5% on any investment you make in loans by these originators. I will not be participating because I am looking for more “quality originators” but a lot of people are more risk averse and like more risk/return than I do.
A full review of Mintos is also available here.
Lendermarket
This month I withdrew €200 from Mintos and deposited €300 in Lendermarket. I really like the simplicity of the platform and the speed which auto-invest puts your money to work. It’s a great platform, in my opinion, for short term loans.
The platform didn’t yield the results that it should yet but this is pretty normal when you start with a platform. I just need to wait a couple of months before things start rolling. Next month I will receive the bonus for my deposits and interest.
Income for Lendermarket was €4.05. This is a very low monthly yield given then balance (around 0.31%) and an annual yield of 4.11%. Let’s see if thing improve from next month, I am confident they will.
You can click here to sign up to Lendermarket and get a 1% bonus for any investment you make during the first 60 days.
To read my Lendermarket review click on this link.
Crowdestor
Nothing to report from Crowdestor this month. All payments have been made on time and they are keep publishing some interesting projects with high rates.
Crowdestor returned €4.33 this month. The number is low because some of the projects I invested in last month don’t pay interest every moth so this figure will fluctuate quite a bit moving forward. Still, the monthly yield is 0.98%, an annual yield of around 13%. It should be around 17-19% but some other months will be higher so it will even out throughout the year.
You can sign-up here and get a 0.5% cashback bonus for any investment you make during the first 180 days on the platform. (the link is not working with ad-blockers)
Read my Crowdestor Review here as well.
Envestio
Envestio added a couple of interesting projects this month with high rates (19-20%). Payments are being made on time so no complaints here.
Envestio returned 7.62€ this month. This is a 1.36% monthly and 18.70% yearly return. I also invested my spare cash on the platform to a project yielding 19%. I always enjoy writing these monthly portfolio updates since I always find uninvested cash in almost all of them and invest them manually so I don’t loose interest.
Monethera
Nothing to report from Monethera either. Just a couple of high-interest projects and the payment to my account being made on time.
Return from Monethera was 1.42€ which is a 1.36% monthly yield and 18.70% annual.
You can click here to sign up to Monethera and get a 5€ bonus and a 0.5% cashback on any investment you make during the first 360 days. The standard cashback period is 90 days but if you use promo code “p2pincome” it will be extended to 360.
Read my Monethera review here.
Grupeer
Grupeer is running some very generous cashback campaigns right now returning a 2.5% cashback until the 6th of January from Cube Funder.
Grupeer returned €10.78 this month meaning a 0.98% monthly and a 13.10% annual yield.
Click here to sign up to Grupeer.
You can read my Grupeer review here.
ViaInvest
This month I received €50 from referral bonuses because 5 people used my referral link to sign up on the platform. I used the bonus to keep investing on the platform since I really like it.
ViaInvest returned €6.26 which is a monthly yield of 0.97% and an annual yield of 13.10%.
Check my ViaInvest Review here
FastInvest
Nothing to report from FastInvest just that it is continuing to publish the loan originators they have been working with.
FastInvest returned €3.19 which is a monthly yield of 1.14% and an annual yield of 15.10%.
Click here to sign up with FastInvest.
A full review of FastInvest is also available here.
Bondster
Nothing to report here as well. Bondster returned €0.92 this month. That is a 0.85% monthly and 11.30% annual yield.
You can sign-up and receive 1% cashback for any funds you invest during your first 90 days. You also need to enter the promo code “P2PIncome” to be eligible for the offer.
PeerBerry
Again nothing to report here, just an income of €3.44. This is a monthly yield of 1.25% and an annual yield of 16.60%.
Click here to sign up with PeerBerry.
A full review of PeerBerry is also available here.
Kuetzal
I am ending this review with the dreaded Kuetzal. I wanted to start with it, but honestly, I need some time to think about it. Most of you have read about this somewhere else by now but if you haven’t, there have been some reports about some misinformation on some projects and one project being outright fraudulent. It’s too early to say if the rumors are true, but we should know very soon. I have put in a withdraw request on the 19th of December, but the funds have yet to appear in my bank account. That is an extremely long period of time, but it is understandable with everyone requesting funds from the platform and requesting buybacks of their investment.
This is definitely not a good situation. Even if the rumors are false, which I don’t believe them to be, this situation will cause something of a “bank run” with people requesting for their investments to be bought back by the platform. In a scenario like this one any institution would fail. I will not be requesting for my investments to be bought back because of two reasons. One, I don’t want to fuel the rush and second, because the amount that I have on the platform is an amount I am ok with losing. However, I did put a withdraw request for my available cash so I can verify the response time.
This was one of the high risk/high reward platforms and my exposure on the platform was around 3% of my overall portfolio. I will not be “writing off” my investment on the platform yet until I am 100% certain. So I will still report my returns from Kuetzal:
Kuetzal returned €4.39 this month which translates into a 1.45% return and a 18.9% annual return. We will see if the last 10 months I have been investing with Kuetzal have been for nothing. However, payments have been made consistently on time.
This month I am also applying for an EU grand and I will be using bsbcon.com for my needs. This company can write your grand requests, business plans, stagetigic plans, etc. Check them out.
Summary
For the month of December 2019, I invested €150( €300 on Lendermarket minus €200 from Mintos plus €50 from the referral bonus at ViaInvest), and the total return from interest, late fees, and secondary market transactions was €93.80 that represents a 7% decrease from last month (€ 100.85).
Overall, my portfolio yielded 0.92% of the starting balance, which means a 12.23% annualized return. That is a small decrease from last month because of Mintos and because the additional funds in Lendermarket take some time to produce results. I beleive next month I will be able to see some more consistent results . The total portfolio value has risen to €10,298.80.
P2P Income 
Nice report, let’s hope we see something back from Kueztal , although after reading the Crowdfunding Rocks report, I think it’s all gone.
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Thank you for the kind words Steve. You are talking about the interview right? That was brutal to read and definitely a bad “sign”.
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Yes it was brutal alright. And then the fact that Albert’s and others in the team have never been registered as members of the board.. nothing. Even the new COO is not listed.
No response to my emails about initiating buyback but I was contacted before Christmas to verify my ID. Since then, radio silence.
Shields up, lasers on stun.
Definitely I will be giving new platforms a lot more die diligence in the future.
https://www.teatmik.ee/en/personlegal/14519131-Kuetzal-O%C3%9C
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I dodged a bullet with Kuetzal, luckily I chose http://bit.ly/Monethera instead. So far so good. Have you considered Evoestate ?
Enjoying the blog. Will be joining fastinvest soon so you get a tickle for your fine work
Hatty sherdoit
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Hello Harry. I have, but since they are just an aggregator of platforms I will not be using them for now. I have heard good things however.
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Congrats on the nice income, Peter! I see we have similar investments. I also have investments with Kuetzal, and I’m happy to know that I’m not the only one “playing it cool”. A bank run really benefits no one! Let’s wait and see what happens 😉
Good luck to us! 😛
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Thank you for the comment Nick. I agree, but I don’t think the bank run depends on people like us with small portfolios. Anyway, we just have to wait and see what happens.
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