Twino shrugs off pandemic with 30pc revenue jump

European peer-to-peer lender Twino reported a 30 per cent rise in revenue to €61.6m (£52.4m) during 2020.

The group issued loans of €158m during the year, which contributed to a 28 per cent year-on-year increase in net profit to €7.4m.

Twino said it continues to make progress towards its goal of becoming a licensed investment broker, which should see the Twino P2P Investment Platform become a regulated company this year.

Twino Group’s chief executive Anastasija Oļeiņika said the preparatory work for the investment brokerage license in Latvia had been completed and “favourable feedback” had been received from the regulator.

“We are hoping to officially receive the license in the coming days,” she added.

As part of this process, AS Twino Investments, which was set up last year to apply for the investment brokerage licence, will take over the Twino investment platform operations.

In spite of the challenges associated with the pandemic in 2020, Twino Investment Platform continued to attract new investors. By the end of the year, the number of identified platform investors had increased to 23,729, which represents a 20 per cent increase on 2019.

Investors funded €138m worth of loans during 2020. This brings the total amount of loans to €843m since the platform was launched in 2015.

The company also launched Twino Ventures last March, providing investments in loans secured by real estate. The new business funded more than €1.3m in loans during the year.

“In 2020, Twino’s capacity to adapt within a very short time to the challenges created by the pandemic were at the core of the sound financial results,” said Oļeiņika.

“Our main priority was to preserve the company’s profitability, in this way guaranteeing security for investors’ funds, as well as the wellbeing of our employees. At the same time, we continued to introduce new investment and lending products into the market.”

The platform returned to pre-pandemic lending volumes for the second month running in June, with €15m (£12.8m) worth of loans funded.

Read more: P2P platform signs up to new Latvian crowdfunding industry guidelines