I mentioned in my earlier post that I tried another service provider. This provider was Mintos . Mintos is an umbrella provider (Marketplace) that aggregates micro-credit companies and makes it available to investors to lend to private individuals or companies. Contrary to Fixura, Mintos does not charge a service fee directly, but I do think that the costs are being paid in a hidden way. Another advantage compared to Fixura is that if you want to get out of your investments, you can use the secondary market to sell all your invesments with one click, and you can withdraw your money within a short time.
I use the Auto-invest feature, selecting which service providers in which country I want my money to be invested in. I always choose only loans with re-purchase guarantee. (The repurchase guarantee is not provided by Mintos, it is guaranteed by the micro credit provider, so Mintos does not take responsibility in case a micro-credit provider goes bankrupt!). It is also a useful service that capital gains can be re-invested either in existing loans or it is possible to exclude them. Diversification is also a must, where you can set the maximum percentage of the capital to be invested in each provider. Thus, one micro-credit provider does not take up your entire capital.
My statistics so far: I have invested €1000 at the end of January. Since that, this amount has been rotated twice. Most of the loans are repaid to borrowers before maturity, with a yield of over 10%.
At Mintos, you can get only minimal information of a loan, including gender, age, credit category / purpose, country, the maturity, the total loan amount, and the lending provider. This minimum information is far more than Fixura has provided.
I’m still a little bit skeptical of P2P lending, especially since the recent LendingClub scandal. Anyone who does not know LendingClub is probably the largest US provider in its category. The recent scandal that turned out (perhaps not surprisingly, the recurring black lamb of the financial sector) was due to hidden costs. Interestingly, LendingClub is listed on a stock exchange since its IPO with a opening $25 price, now it is worth only $3.