Mintos Alternatives P2P Lending Europe & UK

Update: I edited this article in light of recent events regarding Grupeer

Interest rates have sharply dropped since around mid July on Mintos, the platform with the largest allocation in my P2P portfolio. As a result, in this post I would like to talk about some Mintos alternatives that are still offering higher interest rates and show you where I’ve added more funds recently.

In addition, I thought it would be interesting to ask my good friend Bernhard Hummel, who has over 153.000€ invested in P2P lending and more experience than me in the market, about his opinion. You’ll find out what he’s doing in this situation and what he would do as an investor looking for alternatives to Mintos right now.

The current situation on Mintos

Mintos Account Balance Sept 2019

Mintos is still the largest position in my P2P portfolio, with an account balance of 7.958,98€ in my main account, plus 1.026,67€ invested via Invest & Access, for my Mintos Invest & Access vs. Bondora Go & Grow experiment.

Sadly, since around the middle of July, the interest rates have been on a slow decline on Mintos. While I was able to invest into loans offering up to 16% per year in July, the highest available interest rate at the moment is less than 11%.

However, we shouldn’t forget that the same thing happened last year. When I started my investment journey on Mintos last year, interest rates were at a similar level, but then started increasing again by the end of the year. I’m assuming this year will be similar, so I’m personally waiting it out and not moving any funds that are already on Mintos to other platforms. I’m not adding new funds to the platform at the current rates though.

Mintos current investments
My current loans on Mintos still have a weighted average interest rate of 12,57%

My Primary- & Secondary Market AutoInvests are re-investing my funds at 11% interest into buyback loans from loan originators with an A to B- Rating, excluding Dinero. I’m still ok with that interest rate on a diversified platform like Mintos, but I wouldn’t go much lower than that.

Mintos Alternatives

Luckily, there are other peer to peer platforms that are still offering higher interest rates at the moment. Let’s take a look at some Mintos alternatives and where I recently added some funds. You probably already know most of these if you’ve been following my blog or watching my videos.

Iuvo Group

Iuvo Group loans

Iuvo Group still offers plenty of personal loans with interest rates of up to 15% per year on its platform, in addition to KFP business loans with interest rates around 13,3%. All of them come with a buyback guarantee. If you can’t find any right now, just wait until Thursday. I noticed that that’s when new high-interest iCredit loans are added to the platform every week.

I think Iuvo Group can be a great addition to Mintos in the current low-interest environment. I currently have 3.361,67€ invested on the platform, with an internal rate of return of 15,39% (including the 90€ Bonus) since October 2018.

Crowdestor

Unlike Mintos, the loans on Crowdestor don’t come with a typical buyback guarantee. Instead, the platform has a buyback fund since the 1st of March, which is supposed to serve a similar purpose in case of a loan default (which hasn’t happened yet).

Crowdestor keeps publishing interesting business and real-estate loans on a regular basis, with interest rates up to 21% per year. That’s why I recently added 750€ to Crowdestor, raising my account balance to 3.582€.

I split the 750€ into these projects:

  • Mafia Stars: 18% interest + up to 14% success fee
  • Bounty Resort: 19,5% interest
  • Timberland Investment: 16% interest + up to 5% success fee

I’m currently looking forward to these two projects, with interest rates of 21% and 16,5%:

Crowdestor upcoming projects

Bernhard Hummel’s take on the current situation

Ok, now you know some of my Mintos alternatives and where I’ve been adding more funds lately. I decided to ask my good friend Bernhard Hummel about his opinion of the current situation on Mintos, what he’s doing right now and what he would do as a new investor looking for Mintos alternatives.

After all, he has already been in the P2P market for 3-4 years and has over 153.000€ invested on 8 platforms. The biggest chunk, 53.000€, is invested on Mintos, so I though he would be the perfect candidate to ask. You can watch his entire video response here.

150K Euro P2P Portfolio Allocation Bernhard Hummel
Bernhard’s 153.000€ P2P Portfolio

Stay calm, this happens every year

According to Bernhard, this cycle repeats itself every year, with interest rates on Mintos decreasing in the end of summer and going back up in spring. He’s not worried about the current situation and not withdrawing funds, as he still considers the current interest rates of 11% on a diversified P2P platform like Mintos to be a good investment.

His favorite P2P Platform right now

Swaper Bonus

His favorite P2P platform right now, especially as the interest rates are lower on Mintos, is SWAPER. The platform has been around since October 2016 and offers personal loans with a buyback guarantee and interest rates up to 14% per year.

Bernhard also visited their office in Riga last year and interviewed the previous CEO on YouTube. Furthermore, he’s planning to get a closer look behind the scenes and interview the Wandoo Finance Group CEO, the company behind SWAPER, during his trip to Spain this week. I’m sure he will publish the videos on his YouTube channel.

That’s it, I hope you enjoyed the article! Where are you investing your funds right now, during this period of lower interest rates on Mintos?

Video of the article

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Valuable Resources

  • My Investment Tools
    A list containing all my investments in P2P Lending, the brokerage accounts I use to buy ETFs, my speculative investments in Bitcoin and my free bank accounts. It even includes the tools I use for blogging and YouTube.
  • P2P Bonus Offers
    A collection of all the best, currently available bonus and cashback offers in the P2P lending space. Regularly updated.


Disclaimer: Investing involves risks of losses. You should always do your own research before investing into anything. Also, some of the links are affiliate links, which help support me, the website & YouTube channel. I only link to services I use myself, none of them are sponsored.

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10 Comments

    1. Most of the buyback loans are real-estate with relatively little information, plus the young, relatively inexperienced CEO… I just find the platform less interesting personally.

  1. Cheers, good update Angelo. Good job getting Bernhard’s feedback on the interest rate cycles. That’s exactly the kind experience injection newbies like myself need. (PS: tell Bernhard his English is great).

    I’ve also been quite impressed with Crowdestor so far (so much so I should be careful to remain diversified). High interest rates, interesting projects. The “countdown” timer works for me, gives me time to prepare funds for a project I’m interested in, and then I set a reminder in my calendar.

    Will look into dipping my toes into wisefund and monethera, once again thanks for doing the trailblazing. 🙂

    For my P2P adventure. Bondora G&G has the bulk of my funds but I use it same as you, its going into a house downpayment soon. I dropped BulkEstate after a couple of weeks of 100% cash-drag. I’m also just gonna leave my initial Kuetzal investment where it is for a while (still waiting on first interest payment in that). Rest in order of investment are 1) Crowdestor, 2) Envestio, 3) IUVO, 4) Mintos, 5) Grupeer, 6) Kuetzal.

    1. thank you Declan! I was curious as well, since he has more experience than me. Will do!
      I know what you mean, Crowdestor keeps coming out with plenty of new, tempting high-interest projects… I do the same in my calendar, haven’t had any problems getting into any new project that way 🙂
      My pleasure! I like Monethera and Wisefund so far (also their work in sourcing new projects), but since they have a short track record it can’t hurt to be a bit more cautious.
      I like your platform choice, that’s very close to mine! I only skipped Kuetzal from your list, don’t feel like I’m missing out on too much there so far.

  2. Hey Angelo,
    Love your blog. I wonder how much of your overall capital is invested in p2p and ETFs? So what’s your asset allocation l?

    1. Hi Mario,
      I’m very happy to hear that, thank you! As far as my investments are concerned, I currently have around 60% in ETFs and 40% in P2P. Plus cash, a nice amount of money that we’ll get back if/when we move out from our current apartment and a small amount of crypto I bought in Mid-2017 (but that was more of a gamble than an investment).

  3. Hey Angelo!

    I’m also very happy with Crowdestor so far – the volume of loans has increased steadily and I hope they keep on improving their site. Definitely want to try out Iuvo next.

    Regarding the situation on mintos – I am urrently analysing the loans on mintos. I checked the loan-books and the data on the platform and it indeed looks similar to the situation from last year.

    In June 18 there was a big decline of > 10% loans, worse than this year.
    I’m assembling some of the results here right now: https://freedomincomestrategy.com/platforms/mintos

    You can see how the amount of > 10% loans changes month-over-month.

    Best,

    Mike

    1. hey Mike,
      I’m glad you’re also happy with Crowdestor and I think you’ll like Iuvo Group as well.

      Thank you for your sharing your interest rate analysis for Mintos, very interesting!

  4. Love it Mike, great use of data to support. It’s also interesting to see how it doesn’t follow the equities market, which bottomed out around christmas.

    As you have the script already, how hard would it be to go back further in time to see if this is holds for other years?

  5. Hey Declan – I’ll add more statistics, including the previous years on the weekend. Let me know if there are other questions regarding the loan book that might be of interest. Looking at bondora in the coming weeks too