Bondora Review: My Personal Lending Experiences & Some Facts

Bondora is the first Estonian-based peer-to-peer lending marketplace, focused on the consumer loans. Company was founded in the end of 2009 and over 46 500 investors have already invested more than €178 million in loans and have received 22 million in interest.

The Bondora platform brings together individuals and potential investors who are willing to finance a given loan. Bondora is one of the fastest growing peer-to-peer lenders in the world. Based in Estonia it is operating in a market with few competitors. Though Bondora is based in Estonia, it has branched out and now makes loans in Spain, Slovakia, Estonia and Finland. Founded in 2009, Bondora, formerly called isePankur, has loaned over €178 million to date and paid out over €22 million in interest payments to investors. To date the average Bondora investor has enjoyed a 10,3% return.

The inefficient credit markets in which it operates allow for the high returns. Banks in Estonia actually charge prime borrowers 20-29%. Bondora is capitalizing on this mispricing by offering lower rates to borrowers and attractive returns to investors. (more on this later)

Bondora is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in the United Kingdom. Bondora AS is a leading consumer lender in Europe with solid track record in the Finnish, Estonian and Spanish markets.

Key facts about Bondora

Bondora Review: Pros and Cons

PROS

• User-friendly and intuitive dashboard for investors
• Investment policy can be tailored to purchase whole loans based on pre-defined criteria or invest into fractional loans across the market
• International business architecture
• Wide selection of withdraw funds
• Fast ID verification and time to become money invested   (in my example one day)

CONS

• No Buyback guarantee
• Not Regulated
• Loans don’t have a collateral
• Platform has a high ratio of defaults and late loans

Competitors:

Mintos, Twino, Savy, Neofinance, RoboCash, Viainvest

Bondora review: What I have experienced so far… 

Firstly, some words about opening account in Bondora. For me it was easy process, all I needed was to click login with Google account (you also can choose to do that with Facebook or do full registration). And that’s it. Later you have to upload your ID card copy to Bondora dashboard and wait for confirmation.

Add funds to Bondora account also is enough easy and platform has a wide selection of alternatives to do that: you can choose to make a deposit with Trustly, TransferWise, credit card or to make bank transfer. Another part, which unpleasantly surprised me, was withdrawing funds. It was only way to take my money back – I had to fill my account number, when to make a small SEPA payment from my personal bank account, using the details provided by Bondora, and lastly, I had to wait Bondora’s verification, which might take up to even 3 working days.

Secondly, some facts about my experience in using Bondora investment opportunities: I had chosen portfolio management tool with Progressive risk-return strategy. So, I have been investing my own money into Bondora since May 2017 and the results are controversial: for now my net return is 12,74%, but average interest rate in loans, which I had invested, is 28,2%. This situation happened, due to 2 loans from my 11 invested are late more than 60 days.  So, long story short, my Progressive portfolio is profitable, but not as Bondora promised.

All in all, Bondora has a lot experience in p2p lending industry. They issued more than €178 million in loans, has a big amount of investors and offers to them attracting returns. Moreover, the platform has user-friendly and intuitive dashboard and nice portfolio management tool. In the other hand, Bondora seems as risky one, because it is not regulated, doesn’t have buyback guarantees, no loan securities. As in my example, net return is lower than Bondora says it will be. That means, the risk might be too high compared to my net returns.

Bondora review written by Tomas Medeckis