Robocash Review – 21 Months Later (12,26%)

Welcome to my updated Robocash review.

In this post, we’ll go over the specific reasons why this peer-to-peer lending has become one of my favorites, discuss my experience as an investor and have a look at my auto invest settings on the platform.

I’ll also try my best to keep this review up-to-date, so that you can see my actual returns and account balance on a monthly basis.

Before we get into it, please remember that none of this is investment advice, just my personal opinion based on my own experience as an investor.

Let’s start with a bit of background about Robocash. After all, we want to know who we are trusting with our hard earned money.

The Robocash Group

First we need to talk about the Robocash Group, which is the group of lending companies offering all the loans on Robocash. It was founded by Sergey Sedov in 2013.

It is currently active in 9 countries, where it issued a total of $2 billion worth of loans to 20,1 million clients so far. The group mainly focuses on short-term and installment loans, both online and offline.

We’ll have a look at the group’s financial situation later on, when we get to the buyback guarantee on Robocash.

The Robocash P2P Platform

The Robocash P2P lending platform was launched in February 2017.

So far, investors financed a total of over 479 million euros worth of loans on Robocash.

Loan Types Explained

All the loans we can invest in on Robocash are currently offered with interest rates ranging from 8% to 13% per year, a 30-day buyback guarantee and group guarantee. We’ll get to that last part later on.

The Investment process is completely automated, which is not surprising, considering the platform’s name. You can’t buy loans manually, only via the auto invest.

There are a few differences between the loans that we can invest in. I will try my best to explain.

First, we have direct investments into loans from Spain via Prestamer. These are short-term loans with durations that typically range between 7-30 days. Here we directly invest into individual consumer loans.

With Una Pay, we directly invest into consumer loans as well, in this case in the form of salary loans and “buy now pay later” loans in the Phillippines.

And then we have indirect investments via commercial loans in Singapore and Kazakhstan. Here’s how the commercial loans work:

With RC Riga Kazakhstan, we’re financing Robocash’s lending activities in Kazakhstan (via Zaimer). Meanwhile, with RC Riga Singapore, we lend money to a Robocash Holding company based in Singapore, which uses the funds for the lending activities of its subsidiaries in South-East Asian countries, like Indonesia.

The loan term for commercial loans ranges from 30 days to 3 years. You can find out more information about each lending company on the Robocash website.

Buyback & Group Guarantee

As I mentioned, all loans on Robocash come with a 30-day buyback guarantee and a group guarantee by the Robocash Group. We also receive interest in full for the entire period of our investment when a loan is paid back late or bought back by Robocash.

So far, so good.

Still, we should not forget that a buyback guarantee is only as good as the financial situation of the company that’s providing it. So let’s have a look at the financial statements of the Robocash Group, which we can find on their homepage.

Luckily, the group is very transparent about its financial results, which are audited by FBK Grant Thornton, one of the most reputable accounting firms in the world.

According to the published financial results, the Robocash Group earned $23,99 million in net profit in 2020 and did even better in 2021, with $29,49 million in net profit.

2022 is looking good as well so far, with the group generating $14,3 million in net profit during the first 6 months of the year.

It’s great to see that they have a working, profitable business model, which gives me confidence as an investor on the platform.

What You Need To Know About Robocash

Before I tell you about my own experience as an investor so far, I need to address a few more things you might be interested to know.

Interest Payments On Commercial Loans

Commercial loans with longer durations pay interest on a monthly basis as well. Since that part isn’t clearly displayed when looking at your investments on the platform, I wanted to mention it.

Automatic Payouts

Robocash actually has a very unique feature. There is a payout function, which you can set up in your auto invest settings. If you activate it, the platform will automatically send paid back principal and interest payments from loans straight to your bank account, when they reach 50€ or more.

Secondary Market

Robocash introduced an updated secondary market on April 16th, 2021. You can now sell your loans to other investors if you need access to your money before the end of the loan term. There are no secondary market fees.

Here’s how it works:

• Navigate to My Investments
• Select one or more loans
• Click the Sell button.

My Robocash Experience

Alright, let’s have a look at my experience as a Robocash investor so far and my auto invest settings.

I started investing on Robocash on January 19th, 2021. After getting more acquainted with the platform, I increased my deposits to a total of 3.250€ since then.

As of October 1st 2022, I earned a total of 617,76€ in interest so far.

According to Portfolio Performance, this is my current internal rate of return on Robocash: 12,26%

My limited experience with the Robocash support has been excellent as well. I received a detailed response to my e-mails within less than an hour.

My Robocash Auto Invest Settings

When my first deposit arrived on Robocash, I simply created a single auto invest and selected all loan originators.

Well, I quickly realized that it doesn’t diversify over different lending companies and countries automatically, as all of my money was going into commercial loans from Singapore, even when other loans were available as well.

Since I like to diversify my investment over several loan types and countries whenever possible, I ended up creating two more auto invests for the other loan originators.

Here are my current auto invest settings:

• 30% of my funds are going into consumer loans from the Philippines and Spain, with a minimum interest rate of 11% per year. Since Spanish loans currently have a lower interest rate and I have plenty of Spanish loans on other platforms, I’m ok with only buying loans from the Philippines with this auto invest until their rates are equal.
• 30% of my funds are going into commercial loans in Kazakhstan, with a minimum interest rate of 12%.
• 40% are going into commercial loans in Singapore with a minimum interest rate of 12%.

You are of course free to use different auto invest settings, I just wanted to mention my own setup.

My Opinion Regarding Robocash

Alright, so here is my honest, personal opinion regarding Robocash.

What I Like

• I’m able to invest into consumer loans and commercial loans from parts of the world that I’m less exposed to in my other investments, like Kazakhstan and South-East Asia, with an interest rate of up to 13% per year.
• As you know, I’m a fan of platforms where the lending companies have a profitable business model, which they can prove via audited financial statements. This is something that’s important to me. The Robocash Group clearly delivers in that regard, which gives me confidence in the 30-day buyback guarantee and group guarantee that they offer on all the loans on the platform.
• I like the unique features the platform offers, like the payout function, the minimum investment of just 1€ per loan and being able to see accumulated interest as well, in addition to what has been paid out.
• I also appreciate that once the auto invest is set up, the platform takes care of the rest and I don’t have to spend any more time on my investments there. There is also no shortage of available loans to buy.

What Could Be Improved

• It took my a while to understand how commercial loans work on the platform, I think they should be explained more clearly.
• I also think the auto invest could use some diversification settings like on Mintos, where you can set up how much of your portfolio you want to invest into each loan originator. That way we would only need a single auto invest to diversify our investments on Robocash, instead of several ones.
• The web design is a bit inconsistent at the moment, between the redesigned front page and the investor dashboard. Luckily, they’re working on updating that part as well.

All in all, I’m a big fan of the P2P lending platform Robocash after almost 2 years now as an investor.

I would love to know about your own experience in the comments!

Robocash Bonus (up to 1%)

Robocash has a loyalty program with an interest rate bonus ranging from 0,3% to 1% for investors with an account balance above 5.000€.

As far as I know, PeerBerry and Swaper are the only other peer-to-peer lending platforms that offer something similar.

If you found my review helpful and you’re interested in checking out Robocash, you can use this link to sign up.

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