The question occasionally arises if p2p is a good investment space, so I finally fixed my spreadsheet to show my personal data. Few things to note:
1) While a few years back there were a lot of blogs promoting p2p (me kinda being guilty too), this post does not promote anything, the most interesting thing is how p2p performed last year.
2) The numbers are not perfect, due to how every platform tracks income and losses, but I will specify each platform latter on.
3) While I invest in a couple platforms, the returns will depend on each platform, I have no clue how other platforms are doing.
4) I began investing in p2p due to low entry costs and favorable tax laws in my country. Right now, investing in the stock market could be simpler, but I decided to keep this p2p portfolio as I am also interested in this data, so if I lose 100% of my p2p portfolio, it will hurt, but its fine.
5) Its a bit hard to calculate growth rates and returns with portfolio that changes in size. The way I calculated my returns is my own personal choice and is kept for simplicity. I specifically added the data of my monthly interest gains and my deposits/cashing out, so you could recalculate as you wish.
6) Platform size might not mean, that I have the same amount of money invested in loans. Sometimes cash in the platform stays un-invested due to lack of loans that fit my criteria.
7) There are no plans to significantly increase my portfolio, maybe just rebalance. I am at the amount where I could get more than tax free amount in my country, lowering the portfolio could reduce tax declaration hassle, as income bellow 500€ does not need to be declared.
8) if you would recalculate data yourself, keep in mind that it takes about a month to gain interests from deposits, my calculations account for that, but I understand that some might not agree with this. Deposits were also made at random times, sometimes its the begging of the month, sometimes its the end, so the deposit might affect that months returns, might not. No way to check that in my sheet.
9) As I am writing this, its after midnight, I might have done some mistakes, don't judge, point them out and I will try to clarify.
Link to my data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Iq-Z_rOo-ghZ55LvoiBE8pBdtJGcsSqCETWarkeRSSA/edit?usp=sharing
Notes on platforms and data, please read this part, to better understand the numbers.
Finbee - they calculate income by using this formula: income=interests-late principal payments after 90 days. The numbers in my income sheet are already accounting for loses, but only loses after 90 days. Occasionally I take out money out of this platform due to lack of new loans.
Mintos - They calculate all income as income, but you will see that I take out 20€ out of some months, those 20€ were gained from referring a friend, so not to complicate data, I removed them. One important thing to note about this platform, is that it works as a platform that connects lending companies to investors, but when a lending company fails, they don't really want to show those losses as losses, instead they call it "in recovery". In recovery numbers are not portrayed in my data but should technically be included as a loss. My own gains from mintos are: 487.46€, my in recovery funds are: 454.91€. The in recovery funds could be regained, but if I would like to exist the platform right now, my profit would be just 32.55€ (thats with included referral too). On the side note, all lending companies that failed in my Mintos portfolio, failed in 2020, so thats a bit unlucky exception IMO.
Robocash - first off all, 2020 numbers look weird due to me extending maximum loan time to one year, at the end of 2019, so trough out the year I lend out my money and all interest was repaired at the end only. The platform since then started paying monthly interests on all loans.
Another thing about this platform, my personal opinion is that it does look like too good to be true. So far I had no negative experiences, the support answered quickly, taking out my money worked fine, but I can't shake the feeling that its just too good. This is the only platform trough 2020 that had no issues. The biggest red flag is that this is a Russian financial group working in EU from Croatia, but I did try to verify them, their locations are even visible in google street view, so I assume its not a scam
Grupper - RIP platform
. During 2020 the platform basically died, once they run into issues with their own financials. The platform administration still operates, but they work only to return investor money and release news statements every few months. Since 2021 I do not count them in. Once the platform begin to fail, there were some online scam allegations, but I can't prove or disprove that.
Nordstreet - The platform is fine, the data is correct. Not a lot of loans from my side, so the numbers are not reliable. Also on platform size sheet, I don't count in their income, as they use local electronic wallet, so all money that is not invested is outside of the platform
Estateguru - The platform is fine, the data is correct, a bit more loans than Nordstreet, but still not enough to have anything reliable. There is one moment, where I cashed out referral bonus from this platform, keep that in mind.
What each sheet means:
Income - all interest income form each platform at the end of the month depending on what each platform calls income.
Invested - all deposits and all the times I take out money from the specific platform.
Platform size = Deposits + income
Growth rate - I tried to calculate monthly growth rate, cause that's the best way to account for variable platform size.
Things I can say about p2p:
It still is a risky investment, due to general risk, and the platform risk that is really hard to account for. There is some EU wide regulation that is comming out, that will help the investor, but the sector might need some more regulation regarding the platform transparency. As far as I can tell from my reading up, EU and ECB, don't want to regulate this sector too much, leaving it as more risky investment type, but all of the risks left on the investor side. More regulation for investor protection would minimize the difference between p2p and banking deposits and that's not a good thing according to ECB papers (and I agree).
2020 had a financial crisis, and while the stock market recovered quickly, years with economic crisis are definitely bad for lending business, so the numbers are heavily affected by that.
1) While a few years back there were a lot of blogs promoting p2p (me kinda being guilty too), this post does not promote anything, the most interesting thing is how p2p performed last year.
2) The numbers are not perfect, due to how every platform tracks income and losses, but I will specify each platform latter on.
3) While I invest in a couple platforms, the returns will depend on each platform, I have no clue how other platforms are doing.
4) I began investing in p2p due to low entry costs and favorable tax laws in my country. Right now, investing in the stock market could be simpler, but I decided to keep this p2p portfolio as I am also interested in this data, so if I lose 100% of my p2p portfolio, it will hurt, but its fine.
5) Its a bit hard to calculate growth rates and returns with portfolio that changes in size. The way I calculated my returns is my own personal choice and is kept for simplicity. I specifically added the data of my monthly interest gains and my deposits/cashing out, so you could recalculate as you wish.
6) Platform size might not mean, that I have the same amount of money invested in loans. Sometimes cash in the platform stays un-invested due to lack of loans that fit my criteria.
7) There are no plans to significantly increase my portfolio, maybe just rebalance. I am at the amount where I could get more than tax free amount in my country, lowering the portfolio could reduce tax declaration hassle, as income bellow 500€ does not need to be declared.
8) if you would recalculate data yourself, keep in mind that it takes about a month to gain interests from deposits, my calculations account for that, but I understand that some might not agree with this. Deposits were also made at random times, sometimes its the begging of the month, sometimes its the end, so the deposit might affect that months returns, might not. No way to check that in my sheet.
9) As I am writing this, its after midnight, I might have done some mistakes, don't judge, point them out and I will try to clarify.
Link to my data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Iq-Z_rOo-ghZ55LvoiBE8pBdtJGcsSqCETWarkeRSSA/edit?usp=sharing
Notes on platforms and data, please read this part, to better understand the numbers.
Finbee - they calculate income by using this formula: income=interests-late principal payments after 90 days. The numbers in my income sheet are already accounting for loses, but only loses after 90 days. Occasionally I take out money out of this platform due to lack of new loans.
Mintos - They calculate all income as income, but you will see that I take out 20€ out of some months, those 20€ were gained from referring a friend, so not to complicate data, I removed them. One important thing to note about this platform, is that it works as a platform that connects lending companies to investors, but when a lending company fails, they don't really want to show those losses as losses, instead they call it "in recovery". In recovery numbers are not portrayed in my data but should technically be included as a loss. My own gains from mintos are: 487.46€, my in recovery funds are: 454.91€. The in recovery funds could be regained, but if I would like to exist the platform right now, my profit would be just 32.55€ (thats with included referral too). On the side note, all lending companies that failed in my Mintos portfolio, failed in 2020, so thats a bit unlucky exception IMO.
Robocash - first off all, 2020 numbers look weird due to me extending maximum loan time to one year, at the end of 2019, so trough out the year I lend out my money and all interest was repaired at the end only. The platform since then started paying monthly interests on all loans.
Another thing about this platform, my personal opinion is that it does look like too good to be true. So far I had no negative experiences, the support answered quickly, taking out my money worked fine, but I can't shake the feeling that its just too good. This is the only platform trough 2020 that had no issues. The biggest red flag is that this is a Russian financial group working in EU from Croatia, but I did try to verify them, their locations are even visible in google street view, so I assume its not a scam
Grupper - RIP platform
. During 2020 the platform basically died, once they run into issues with their own financials. The platform administration still operates, but they work only to return investor money and release news statements every few months. Since 2021 I do not count them in. Once the platform begin to fail, there were some online scam allegations, but I can't prove or disprove that. Nordstreet - The platform is fine, the data is correct. Not a lot of loans from my side, so the numbers are not reliable. Also on platform size sheet, I don't count in their income, as they use local electronic wallet, so all money that is not invested is outside of the platform
Estateguru - The platform is fine, the data is correct, a bit more loans than Nordstreet, but still not enough to have anything reliable. There is one moment, where I cashed out referral bonus from this platform, keep that in mind.
What each sheet means:
Income - all interest income form each platform at the end of the month depending on what each platform calls income.
Invested - all deposits and all the times I take out money from the specific platform.
Platform size = Deposits + income
Growth rate - I tried to calculate monthly growth rate, cause that's the best way to account for variable platform size.
Things I can say about p2p:
It still is a risky investment, due to general risk, and the platform risk that is really hard to account for. There is some EU wide regulation that is comming out, that will help the investor, but the sector might need some more regulation regarding the platform transparency. As far as I can tell from my reading up, EU and ECB, don't want to regulate this sector too much, leaving it as more risky investment type, but all of the risks left on the investor side. More regulation for investor protection would minimize the difference between p2p and banking deposits and that's not a good thing according to ECB papers (and I agree).
2020 had a financial crisis, and while the stock market recovered quickly, years with economic crisis are definitely bad for lending business, so the numbers are heavily affected by that.