mintos invest access vs bondora go grow 6 months

Mintos recently launched Invest & Access as a new, simplified way to invest on the platform and to cash out more easily. I can’t help but think that they were at least partly inspired by Bondora Go & Grow, which I’ve been using since September of last year.

I’m going to compare the two peer to peer platforms and test out which one is better for short-term investments in P2P lending.

To find out, I invested 1.000€ on both Mintos Invest & Access and Bondora Go & Grow on June 12th. Over the coming weeks and months, I’ll review which one offers the better experience, higher returns and how much money we can withdraw at different points in time.

Update (December 15th): I added my 6-Month Investment-Update!

About Mintos

Mintos launched in 2015 in Riga, Latvia. It has quickly grown to become the biggest P2P lending marketplace of its kind. The average net annual return investors have received on their money is 12,10%.

As of July 1st, 2019 over 2,6 billion Euros have been invested on Mintos by 153.000 investors from all over the world.

Mintos total invested

To put things into perspective, over 233 million Euros have been invested in June 2019 alone, which is more than the total sum of investments most competing European crowdlending platforms have collected since their inception (including Bondora).

Mintos has an enormous number of available loans with a buyback guarantee on its marketplace, offered by 63 loan originators in 30 countries. As a result, you’re able to diversify your peer to peer investments a lot within a single platform.

My experience with Mintos so far

Mintos Diversification July 2019
My current investments on Mintos (Auto-Invest)

I added Mintos to my investment portfolio in October 2018. Ever since then, the auto-invest has been very reliable for me and has usually kept me fully invested.

However, since the launch of Invest & Access a couple of weeks ago, there have been some days where it wasn’t investing properly, even though there were plenty of available loans matching my criteria. Mintos already assured me that they’re aware and working on a fix.

A welcome development has been the increase in interest rates on the Mintos marketplace over the past few months, with plenty of buyback loans now offering up to 15-16% interest per year.

For all of these reasons, I’ve recently made Mintos the largest position in my own P2P lending portfolio as well.

I mostly invest in personal loans (short- and long-term) and car loans on Mintos, but they do also offer mortgage loans, agricultural loans, business loans and invoice financing (albeit at usually lower interest rates).

Check out my Monthly P2P Income Updates to find out how my Mintos investment has been going so far.

What is Mintos Invest & Access?

Mintos Invest & Access
Yes, Mintos is also planning to launch an app later this year.

As you probably guessed when reading the name of their new investment strategy, Mintos launched Invest & Access to make investing as well as cashing out easier for the average investor.

And they do have a point. A lot of people might feel a little overwhelmed by the huge offering of loan types, interest rates, durations, loan originators and countries Mintos enables you to invest in.

Most people just want an easy way to invest their money and don’t want to spend much time trying to find the perfect auto invest settings or even change them on a regular basis, whenever a new loan originator joins the platform or there is a fluctuation in available interest rates.

They are more than happy to passively get the average annual interest rate of ~12% on the Mintos marketplace, while spending the least possible amount of time looking after their investment.

Those are exactly the kind of people Mintos is targeting with Invest and Access and I’m pretty sure most investors on the platform fall into that category.

Invest & Access vs. Auto Invest

At the end of the day, everyone has to ask themselves this question:

Is an additional 1-2% return per year worth spending extra time on?

For most, the answer is likely no. But it probably depends on the size of your investment and whether or not you’re a ‘power user’ (as Mintos likes to call people like me), who actually enjoys fiddling with settings to aim for the highest potential returns.

Setting up Mintos Invest & Access

In case you prefer the video format, here is a video of me opening my Invest & Access account live on June 12th.

Setting up Invest & Access was very simple and straightforward. First of all, you need to have a Mintos account. If you haven’t registered yet, you can get a 1% bonus on your investment on Mintos by signing up via my link.

Mintos Invest & Access Setup

After logging into your Mintos account, just click on Invest and you’ll instantly see the option to create your Invest & Access portfolio. All you need to do then is to enter the amount you want to invest (from 500€ – 100.000€), check the box and click on Invest.

In my case, I opened a new, separate account under my wife’s name and deposited 1.000€, so that I can better compare Invest & Access with my current Mintos AutoInvest strategy and Bondora Go & Grow over time.

Mintos Create Invest & Access

Next, you’ll see the message above. You now have to wait a couple of minutes for Mintos to create your portfolio. Pro tip: The screen doesn’t refresh itself, so just refresh it manually after a couple of minutes.

Mintos Invest & Access Portfolio

Alright, we’re done! Our 1.000€ deposit is already (almost) fully invested after a couple of minutes. The small, remaining amount was invested shortly after.

One thing I forgot to mention: Set your portfolio target higher than the amount you invested (for example 1.050€ for a 1.000€ investment), to make sure that the interest payments you receive are reinvested into new loans automatically.

The portfolio Mintos created for us has a an average annual interest rate of 12,07% (not bad!) and our investments have an average loan duration of 21 months and 28 days.

But how diversified are our investments on the platform? Let’s take a look.

Mintos Invest & Access diversification

Even though our investment is relatively small, it was spread across loans from 36 different lending companies in many different countries, which is nice to see.

Now that we got the Invest part of Mintos‘ new investment strategy out of the way, what about the Access?

Mintos Invest & Access Cash Out

To cash out part of the investment at any point in time, scroll to the top of the Invest & Access page and click on the Cash out link. Then, enter the amount you would like to withdraw from your investments and click on the blue Cash out button.

Shortly after, Mintos will start selling part of your loans according to the amount you entered and you’ll be able to withdraw that money. To make sure that money isn’t being reinvested via Invest & Access afterwards, make sure you also lower your Portfolio target to your desired amount.

You should know that you can only sell investments that are current right away, not the ones that are late or in grace period. With those you will have to wait until they either turn current again or a maximum of 60 days for them the be bought back via the buyback guarantee.

About Bondora

Bondora was founded in 2008 in Tallinn, Estonia. It is one of the oldest and most trusted peer-to-peer lending platforms on the market. As of July 1st, 2019 over 68.800 investors from all over the world funded 229,9 million Euros worth of loans from Estonia, Finland and Spain.

Bondora Statistics July 2019

Until May 2018, the only way to invest your money with Bondora was by directly investing in consumer loans through Portfolio Pro or their Portfolio Manager.

While the average interest rate on the market is high, none of the loans on the platform come with a buyback guarantee, meaning that you could have to write off defaults from your returns and sometimes have to wait several years to get money back that you invested in single loans.

Bondora Go & Grow changed all of that last year.

What is Bondora Go & Grow?

Unlike the other investment strategies on Bondora, Go & Grow automatically invests your money in a well-diversified bucket of 50.000 loans across all credit ratings (AA-HR) and countries on the platform.

With Go & Grow, you don’t have to deal with potential defaults or late payments of single loans any more. The minimum investment is 1€.

Bondora Go & Grow Rating Distribution
Source: bondora.com

However, its biggest advantage compared to most other P2P lending platforms is that you can access your money at any time. As a result, Go & Grow has quickly become the most popular way to invest on Bondora, which is probably where Mintos got its inspiration for Invest & Access from.

Bondora Go & Grow offers an interest rate of ‘only’ ~6.75% per year, but that’s the price you have to pay for instant liquidity. You also pay a flat 1€ fee when you make a withdrawal from your Bondora Go & Grow account.

You can see the interest your money is generating on a daily basis as it is added to your account, which can be very motivating.

My Bondora Go & Grow experience so far

Bondora Go & Grow

If you’ve been following my blog, you probably already know that I’ve been very happy using Bondora Go & Grow to generate interest on money I might need again within a couple of months.

What I like the most about it is the liquidity it has provided me, while still earning me 6,75% per year on my deposits. I’ve made use of the easy access to my money several times since I started investing on Go & Grow in September 2018.

All in all, for me it has been the perfect investment product for short-term investing so far. As of July 1st, my Go & Grow accounts generated 103,34€ in interest on money that would just have been sitting around doing nothing on my bank account.

Setting Up Bondora Go & Grow

Once again, in case you prefer the video format, here is a video of me opening the Go & Grow account live on June 12th.

Let’s dive into setting up a Bondora Go & Grow account. If you don’t have an account yet, you can get a 5€ Bonus by using my link.

After logging in, select Go & Grow in the left sidebar and click on Start now.

Go & Grow purpose

Now, select your primary purpose for investing on Go & Grow. I selected Extra Income for my new account, but it won’t make a difference either way.

Bondora Go & Grow new account

Here we need to give our account a name. I called mine Short term cash, as that’s usually what I’m using Bondora Go & Grow for.

Next, set the starting amount you want to invest and set the monthly amount to 0 if you’re not planning on adding something on a monthly basis. The years part doesn’t matter, that’s just a projection and won’t change anything.

If you want money that you wire to Bondora to be automatically transferred to Go & Grow, then enable the auto-transfers box, otherwise disable it. Lastly, click on Create my Go & Grow account to finish creating the account.

Bondora Go & Grow deposits

If you already transferred the funds you wanted to invest to Bondora beforehand, you’ll be able to select Bondora as Payment type to move the money over to Go & Grow.

Otherwise, you can make your deposit via bank wire, Trustly (usually faster if your bank supports it), credit card or TransferWise straight to your new Go & Grow account.

bondora go grow account start

We’re done! Now our Go & Grow account can start earning interest right away and face off against Mintos Invest & Access over the coming weeks and months.

bondora go and grow withdraw

If at any point you want to cash out a part or all of your investment, select Withdraw from the left sidebar and then enter the amount you would like to withdraw.

Mintos Invest & Access vs. Bondora Go & Grow

As I mentioned in the beginning of the article, I invested 1.000€ into both Mintos Invest & Access and Bondora Go & Grow on June 12, 2019.

I’m curious to find out which one of the two platforms is better suited for short-term investments in peer-to-peer lending and how much money we’re able to withdraw at different points in time over the course of the experiment.

In theory, Mintos should end up beating Bondora Go & Grow on returns. However, Bondora Go & Grow starts adding regular interest payments after only a day, while Mintos usually takes a while to get things rolling. It will be interesting to see at what point Mintos takes over and if it’s worth sacrificing liquidity for.

Alright, let’s see how our investments are doing so far. We’ll take a look at the returns in Euros, compare the interest rate in the dashboard with our actual internal rate of return (IRR) and find out how much we’re able to withdraw (while taking into account the flat 1€ withdrawal fee on Bondora Go & Grow).

After 1 Week

Mintos vs. Bondora after 1 Week

Interest received after 1 Week:

Interest rate vs. Internal rate of return (IRR):

How much can we withdraw after 1 Week?

Watch my 1-Week Update Video for more details

After 2 Weeks

Mintos vs Bondora after 2 weeks

Note: Sadly I was one day late here, so this result was after 15 days.

Interest received after 2 Weeks:

Interest rate vs. Internal rate of return (IRR):

How much can we withdraw after 2 Weeks?

After 3 Weeks

Mintos vs. Bondora after 3 weeks

Interest received after 3 Weeks:

Interest rate vs. Internal rate of return (IRR):

How much can we withdraw after 3 Weeks?

After 4 Weeks

Mintos Invest Access vs Bondora Go Grow after 1 month

Interest received after 4 Weeks:

Interest rate vs. Internal rate of return (IRR):

How much can we withdraw after 4 Weeks?

One Month Update Video

After 5 Weeks

Mintos Invest & Access vs Bondora Go & Grow after 5 weeks

Interest received after 5 Weeks:

Interest rate vs. Internal rate of return (IRR):

How much can we withdraw after 5 Weeks?

After 6 Weeks

Mintos Invest & Access vs Bondora Go & Grow after 6 weeks

Interest received after 6 Weeks:

Interest rate vs. Internal rate of return (IRR):

How much can we withdraw after 6 Weeks?

After 7 Weeks – Mintos finally caught up with Bondora!

Mintos Invest & Access vs Bondora Go & Grow after 7 weeks

Interest received after 7 Weeks:

Interest rate vs. Internal rate of return (IRR):

How much can we withdraw after 7 Weeks?

After 8 Weeks – Still pretty close

Mintos Invest & Access vs Bondora Go & Grow after 8 weeks

Interest received after 8 Weeks:

Interest rate vs. Internal rate of return (IRR):

How much can we withdraw after 8 Weeks?

Two Month Update Video

After 10 Weeks

Mintos Invest & Access vs Bondora Go & Grow after 10 weeks

Interest received after 10 Weeks:

Interest rate vs. Internal rate of return (IRR):

How much can we withdraw after 10 Weeks?

After 12 Weeks

Mintos Invest & Access vs Bondora Go & Grow after 12 weeks

Interest received after 12 Weeks:

Interest rate vs. Internal rate of return (IRR):

How much can we withdraw after 12 Weeks?

Three Month Update Video

After 16 Weeks

Mintos Invest & Access vs Bondora Go & Grow after 16 weeks

Interest received after 16 Weeks:

Interest rate vs. Internal rate of return (IRR):

How much can we withdraw after 16 Weeks?

Four Month Update Video

After 20 Weeks

Mintos Invest & Access vs Bondora Go & Grow after 20 weeks

Interest received after 20 Weeks:

Interest rate vs. Internal rate of return (IRR):

How much can we withdraw after 20 Weeks?

Five Month Update

Mintos Invest & Access vs Bondora Go & Grow after 5 months
Note: I skipped making a video this month, as there hasn’t been too much of a change

Interest received after 5 Months:

Interest rate vs. Internal rate of return (IRR):

How much can we withdraw after 5 Months?

Six Month Update Video (December 12th)

Conclusion (for now): Which one is better?

At least to me, so far Bondora Go & Grow seems to be the better option when it comes to short-term investments in peer to peer lending, especially when it comes to liquidity.

As of December 12th, after having been invested on both platforms for 6 months, we are unable to withdraw 28% of the funds on Mintos, because they are either late or in grace period. Meanwhile, on Go & Grow, we’re able to withdraw our entire deposit as well as all of the profit we made so far (-1€ flat withdrawal fee).

It’s interesting to see how the number of late loans on Mintos has grown almost every single week until week 8, after which it finally started to decrease a bit.

According to the Statistics page on Mintos, 25% of all currently outstanding loans are late or in grace period on average, which is close to what we see in our portfolio after 6 months as well.

Still, because of the relatively high percentage of late loans, Mintos Invest & Access lags far behind Bondora Go & Grow as far as access to your money is concerned.

mintos vs bondora cash out
How much we would have been able to cash out on a month-by-month basis

I’m curious to see how that number is going to change going forward.

Regarding interest payments, after 7 weeks, Mintos finally caught up to Go & Grow due to the higher interest rate, something that I actually expected to happen sooner than it did.

After six months, it seems as if Mintos should stay ahead there, unless the average interest rate decreases further on the platform.

However, because of the decrease in average interest rates on Mintos over the past couple of months, the Invest & Access page now shows an average interest rate of only 9% for new investors, which is a significant drop compared to the ~12% interest my portfolio had when I started my experiment. In my opinion, that currently makes Invest & Access far less interesting for new investors compared to Bondora Go & Grow.

Stay tuned for future updates!

Last but not least, if you’d like to support me and test out the platforms for yourself, you can…

Which one of the two investment strategies do you like more after six months? What’s your take on the results so far?

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Valuable Resources

  • My Investment Tools
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    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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18 Comments

  2. You can withdraw the full amount of your investment but you pay a flat 1€ fee for withdrawals on Go & Grow, which I already subtracted in the calculations 🙂

    Reply

  3. I was doing a simulation on my go grow account. I currently have 125 euros.
    I made a transfer of 10 euiros, a card payment of another 10 euros, and a payment with another card of 100 euros.
    but instead he only lets me withdraw 110 euros. 100 euros on one card and 10 on the other card.
    The money that is sent by bank transfer as it is withdrawn?

    How do I withdraw all the money?

    Reply

  4. All I know is that when you deposit money via credit card, you have to first withdraw the same amount you deposited to the card (or cards in your case), before you can withdraw the rest to your bank.

    The bank transfer option should show up again after the initial amount is returned to the credit cards it came from. It’s done this way so that nobody has to pay credit card fees (neither the investor, nor Bondora).

    Hope this helps! Otherwise reach out to the support, they’ve always been fast replying to me.

    Reply

  5. Which is the cost to transfer Money from bondora’s or minto’s account to your Credit card or Bank?

    Reply

    1. Ciao Giuseppe! Transfers to/from Bondora and Mintos are free, only when you withdraw money directly from your Bondora Go & Grow account you pay a 1€ fee.

      Reply

  6. Hi Angelo!
    Could you write a post on how you use the Portfolio Performance application? All the guides I find, are in German 🙂
    I’m especially interested in, how you get all the data logged. Withdrawals and adding euros seems easy, but how do you log the interest coming in? Seems like a massive job 🙂
    Best, Søren

    Reply

    1. Good idea, I think you’re not the only one who’s interested in that 🙂

      For now: I keep it simple, for my Bondora vs. Mintos experiment I add interest once/week for the updates and for my monthly portfolio updates I just add the account balance difference compared to the previous month. Adding every single interest payment manually would not be worth the time investment and lead to the same result 🙂

      Reply

  7. Hi Angelo! I’ve made my first investment in Bondora today. How do you keep fees to a minimum, when you deposit to your Bondora account? Unfortunately I didn’t på attention to the fees… Good first mistake to make!

    Reply

    1. Hi Simon! I’ve never paid fees for deposits (neither via bank nor credit card), I’m assuming you had to pay fees because you transfered money in another currency than Euro?

      To reduce/eliminate currency exchange fees I like using free services like N26, Revolut and Transferwise.

      Reply

  8. I’m from Denmark, so our currency is not euro, but DKK (Danish Krones). That’s probably why I’d imagine. I’ve now started using revolut, and I’m waiting for my payment to go through to my Mintos account. I transfered the money yesterday, and they expect it to have reached Mintos on Thursday. A little slow, but I guess its worth it, considering there are no fees. Thank you 🙂

    Reply

  9. A little strange, I’m also Danish, and I can top op i Revolut from my VISA/Dankort in the morning (max 2.000 DKK), exchange DKK to EUR the second after and transfer the money to Mintos, arriving the same afternoon and have them invested before the day ends.
    I do get a message about that it can take longer, but for now (more than 10 times), all transfers has been done on the same day.

    Reply

  10. Hey Angelo,
    Any other products/platforms for short-term liquidity you know of or could recommend?
    I’m also looking into Invest & Access at the moment, but I’m not too impressed by the choice of loan originators by the software – could be due to the lack of supply of decent loans at the moment.

    Then again, if you want the flexibility of choosing loan originators, Auto-Invest is the better choice anyway. This is really more for people wanting to fire and forget on their first investment for now I guess

    Reply

  11. Hello Angelo,

    When withdrawing from the bondora go & Grow account, can I only withdraw the money to the same account as the money came from in the first place? Or can I for instance withdraw that money to a transferwise account, who will then transfer the money where I want it to get?

    Best,

    Sigurd

    Reply

    1. Hi Sigurd,

      usually as a safety measure P2P platforms only let you withdraw directly to the account that you used to make a deposit (similarly to brokerage accounts). Seems like it’s the same on Bondora. I think you should be able to withdraw directly to Transferwise if you make a deposit from that account (the money doesn’t need to be invested) – or maybe contact support, they might be able to add that option manually.

      Reply

  12. Monese is also good. You can top up €300 twice in a month straight from Danish bank then send. I also use Revolut. N26 I don’t like that you can’t top up instantly.

    Elf Turdish

    Reply

  13. I have invested in Mintos “Invest & Access” Just €650 to test it out. After a few days I have €33 unavailable for cash out. I thought I could always get all my money back immediately?

    Reply

  14. Hi Angelo

    Any plans to update the Bondora G&G vs Mintos Invest & Access for 2020?

    It would be good to see a performance comparison following the pandemic.

    Regards
    Joe

    Reply