Welcome to my latest monthly income update! After receiving a lot of positive feedback and interest regarding my ETF investments in addition to P2P lending, I decided to start including my dividend income as well, starting this month.
That being said, I will still keep the update mostly centered around peer to peer lending. As usual, we’ll talk about recent events, my returns and my strategy for each platform going forward.
Before taking a look at everything else, we should address the situation with Grupeer one more time.
Update on Grupeer
Sadly, things aren’t looking any better regarding Grupeer.
If you haven’t done so already, make sure you download all relevant data in your account, in case Grupeer’s website goes offline. To do that correctly, watch this excellent video Luis created, explaining how you can download all loan agreements and have them automatically renamed using a Chrome extension.
In addition, thanks to the blogger Ido Shkedi we now have a website summarizing some of what happened, the legal action against Grupeer being prepared and some details about the core team behind it:
I’ve seen some people (in my opinion unfairly) criticizing the core team in charge, so I want to give you a bit of context:
- They have been working pretty much non-stop for free, doing research, collecting information, communicating with lawyers, with banks, with loan originators and with over 3.000 members in the Telegram group.
- I joined them in the first call with lawyers in the end of March and I remember how impressed I was by how prepared they were and how much information they had gathered within a short amount of time.
- From my interactions with them, what I can tell you is that they are good people, trying their best to find an effective legal solution for thousands of investors affected by Grupeer. I have no doubts about that.
- In addition, they are willing to put themselves out there publicly, to represent thousands of people. I’m very grateful to them for the initiative and for the countless hours they’re putting into all of this.
- Sadly these things take time if you want to do them right, but they’re planning to announce more soon. You can see the action plan here.
Look, I can’t give you legal advice or any recommendations, this is not my area of expertise. To me, this is the best option I know of right now and depending on the final cost structure for the criminal case, it’s up to everyone to decide for themselves if they want to join or not.
If this is something that interests you, make sure you stay up top date here:
P2P Lending Income – April 2020 Overview
| Platform | Income | IRR | Invested | Value |
| Iuvo Group | 24,70€ | 13,78% | 2.260€ | 2.965€ |
| Mintos | 111,94€ | 13,17% | 9.005€ | 10.127€ |
| Mintos I&A | 16,92€ | 11,05% | 478€ | 572€ |
| Bondora G&G | 14,73€ | 6,66% | 2.330€ | 2528€ |
| Crowdestor | 0€ | 9,88% | 6.200€ | 6.556€ |
| Swaper | 9,14€ | 11,70% | 332€ | 424€ |
| Viainvest | 15,94€ | 10,46% | 1.500€ | 1.585€ |
| Lendermarket | 6,12€ | 9,39% | 3.000€ | 3.107€ |
| EvoEstate | 0€ | 2,45% | 630€ | 633€ |
| Wisefund | 0 | -11,41% | 60€ | 0 (Exit fee) |
| Grupeer* | 0* | -….%* | 2.825€* | 0* |
| Monethera* | 0* | -….%** | 1.028€* | 0* |
| Envestio* | 0* | -….%* | 2.807€* | 0* |
| Total | 199,49€ | -12,16% | 32.455€ | 28.496€ |
Dividends
As I mentioned in the intro, I decided to start including the dividends I receive from my ETFs in my monthly income. After all, ETFs are an important part of my asset allocation and investment strategy. Feel free to let me know in the comments how you feel about this change.
While my monthly income from P2P lending dropped to 199,49€, my wife and I also received 145,64€ worth of dividends from our Vanguard FTSE All-World ETF in April.
So all in all, that still resulted in a nice monthly total of 345,13€ in investment income.
Alright, let’s take a look at how each of my P2P platforms did last month.
Iuvo Group
- Income (April 2020): 24,70€ (-9,32€)
- IRR: 13,78%
- Invested since: 05.10.2018
Iuvo Group has been handling the current crisis pretty well in my opinion and has kept communicating with investors by sending out regular updates.
Last month I made the decision to lower my allocation to the platform to around 2.500€, so I started by withdrawing 590€ over the course of April.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy with my experience on Iuvo Group. Still, in the midst of the current crisis, I want to diversify my money a bit more over different countries and loan originators and spread my risk as much as possible.
Mintos
- Income (April 2020): 111,94€ (-11,81€)
- IRR: 13,17%
- Invested since: 27.09.2018
All in all, I’m pretty happy with the interest I received on Mintos last month.
However, borrowers and loan originators on Mintos are not left unaffected by the global crisis. As a result, my pending payments doubled compared to one month ago. We’ll have to wait and see how things turn out over the coming months.
Mintos Invest & Access – Withdrawing
- Income (April 2020): 16,92€ (+10,74€)
- IRR: 11,05%
- Invested since: 12.06.2019
I’m still withdrawing from my Mintos Invest & Access account after my experiment, as I prefer using the Auto Invest on my main Mintos account.
The reason why returns have nonetheless been a bit higher last month is that I bought a couple of loans manually (partly with a discount) on the secondary market, with some of the money that I had cashed out from Invest & Access.
Bondora Go & Grow
- Income (April 2020): 14,73€ (-2,31€)
- IRR (incl. withdrawals): 6,66%
- Invested since: 01.09.2018
As I mentioned my previous update, Bondora implemented partial withdrawals recently, due to a substantial increase in Go & Grow withdrawals.
- You can get a 5€ Bonus on Bondora when you sign up via my link.
Crowdestor
- Income (April 2020): 0€ (-43,61€)
- IRR: 9,88%
- Invested since: 03.04.2019
As I mentioned in my last update, Crowdestor decided to give the businesses we invested in 3 months of extra breathing room under these extreme circumstances, by introducing a leniency period until the end of June.
As a result, I have no income to report from the platform for April.
However, in April the platform surveyed its investors regarding the recovery period that was introduced.
The majority of investors chose Option E: CROWDESTOR generates a differentiated model of interest repayment in each project depending on the actual situation.
As a result, May is already looking a lot better. As of May 6th, I received three interest payments and several more, including a full loan repayment, are scheduled under upcoming payments for this month.
Crowdestor has also been updating investors regularly about specific projects in its official Facebook group and via e-mail, which I appreciated.
Swaper – Withdrawing
- Income (April 2020): 9,14€ (-3,21€)
- IRR: 11,70%
- Invested since: 02.10.2019
After the problems with Grupeer, I made the decision to start withdrawing from Swaper in the end of March. I’ll be back once audited financial statements are published.
Over the course of April, I withdrew 967€ from the platform. I’ve had no issues with any of my withdrawals, they all arrived on my bank account within a few days.
Viainvest
- Income (April 2020): 15,94€ (+2,63€)
- IRR: 10,46%
- Invested since: 11.10.2019
My returns on Viainvest have remained stable throughout the pandemic, which I’m very happy with. In April, Viainvest reached out to me and a few other bloggers regarding our outlook on the current situation.
- Read all the responses here
Lendermarket
- Income (April 2020): 6,12€ (-6,49€)
- IRR: 9,39%
- Invested since: 21.11.2019
I received very little interest on Lendermarket in April, as the large majority of my loans is currently late due to Covid-19.
As Omayra Roig explained to me last month, many of the late loans have actually been extended by Creditstar (as they were legally obliged to do in many cases), but since the platform doesn’t support extensions, they will keep showing up as late until they are bought back after 60 days.
As long as I keep receiving interest in full for any loan that’s 60 days late, I have no problem with that – even though I would prefer a more regular cashflow from the platform.
Since all of my late loans are from Spain and Poland, I excluded those two countries from my Auto Invest for now. I’m curious to see if my recently purchased loans from Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Estonia stay current and pay interest on time.
- You can get 1% Cashback on all your investments on Lendermarket after 60 days by using my link here
- Lendermarket Review
EvoEstate
- Invested since: 03.02.2020
My two projects on EvoEstate have a loan duration of 12 months and I won’t receive interest payments before the end of the loan term, so I don’t have a lot to report on as an investor.
That aside, EvoEstate launched an originators page, with more details about each project originator, late projects and ratings:
- EvoEstate project originators
- You can get 0,5% Cashback for 6 months on EvoEstate by using this link
That’s it!
Looks like we made it through another crazy month of economic uncertainty and Covid-19 lockdowns! Thank you for reading my latest monthly update and please stay safe.
You might find this useful:
- P2P Lending During Coronavirus
- Current P2P Lending Bonus and Cashback Offers (May 2020)
- My Entire Investment Portfolio
- How To Track Your Investments In P2P Lending
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Thank you Angelo !
– Mintos : indeed lots of changes in interest rates and LOs; if it is not a secret, could you summarize the current settings of your Auto-invest? At least which LOs you selected ?
– LenderMarket : indeed all my loans are being bought back after 60 days; hence no so much recurring payments; but they are paid, fair enough.
– Vanguard FTSE All-World ETF :
— how much did you invest to received these 145,64€ of dividends in April ? Is it easy to calculate which interest rate ?
— if possible, could you make a Youtube video showing how to set the account up, buy positions, etc…
As every month, thank you for your update, and stay all safe 🙂
Centrino
My pleasure, Centrino!
– I’m still using these settings on Mintos
– I think at the time (dividends were calculated in March, paid out in April) it was about 30k. This ETF pays them out quarterly. The dividend yield is nothing special, around 2,2-2,5% per year. But either way, I reinvest them and am investing long term. It’s still nice to see that increase in cashflow over time.
– Have you seen my ETF video/article? Feel free to let me know specifically what wasn’t clear, maybe I can help.
Thank you as usual, happy to have you here! Stay safe as well!
Thanks, Angelo, for putting this up. Very useful as always.
Are your income figures reported here all pre tax? I.e., this March monthly total of 345,13€ is not the net income (needs to be taxed).
Thanks for the clarification,
Manfred
Manfred that depends on where you live, laws and many more things and is not so important rly. Most people have pre tax numbers since that’s the actual amounts before realising the profits. Where I live there is 0% tax on P2P, stocks and other profits for the first 17 years living there so all my earnings on these investments are tax free 15-16 years more 🙂
yeah, that’s the reason why I report pre-tax numbers. It was still a valid question, as I think I haven’t mentioned it before explicitly. That is incredible, according to your blog you’re in Cyprus, right?
Yes Angelo, I moved there to try out living under the sun for the most part of the year 🙂 A big bonus is the systems they have in place for forener investors willing to settle down there and tax systems for almost everything is ridiculous compared to most countries hehe.
I can imagine, I hope you’re enjoying yourself! Yeah, the low tax rates are certainly very enticing, especially for entrepreneurs.
Thank you Manfred! Yes, these are all pre-tax numbers.
ETF dividend ist not the same as interest. Very different. Dividends are taken FROM what you already own (your stocks price) and given back to you. While Interest is given ON TOP of what you own. Therefor its kinda misleading to think of it dividends as “profit”. I personally dont include it in my books.
Thanks for the feedback Pablo! To each their own, I decided to count this dividend income as well. I personally find it motivating to see that number grow over time.
Thank you Angelo for your detailed portfolio report!
Although it´s a tough situation right now, the good thing is that it reveals the strenghness (or weakness) of some p2p plattforms. I hope we will profit from better and regulated p2p plattforms in future (the ones that will survive this crisis).
By the way, what´s your opinion regarding new p2p plattforms that entered the market within the last months? Are you sceptical or do you see any oportunities?
You’re very welcome, Dennis!
I agree. In addition, nobody will be able to say P2P lending hasn’t been through an economic crisis yet and we’ll have valuable data to look back on in a couple of years!
Any platform in particular? I added some new ones to my P2P Bonus page, but I haven’t seen any that really caught my attention or seem to be doing something better than the ones we have already.
Hi Angelo! Great blog post!
I’m looking into adding some P2P platforms to my investment portfolio. One of these is Bondora. But I’ve been reading a few people complaining about it being a scam and them being unable to withdraw their funds. Can you confirm that you were actually able to withdraw your funds from Bondora?
Thanks in any case!