Bondora sees Netherlands monthly originations surpass €1m for first time
Bondora reported a dip in loan originations in May across all markets except the Netherlands, which more than doubled to over €1m (£854,000) for the first time.
The European peer-to-peer lending platform said that total originations came in at €19.4m in May, a 4.2 per cent decrease from €20.2m in April.
Originations in its newest market, the Netherlands, more than doubled to €1.83m. Bondora began lending in the country in September 2022.
Finland accounts for 70 per cent of loan originations and saw a decline of 8.6 per cent in May to €13.5m.
Read more: Bondora actively working on scaling loan services across Europe
Estonia, which accounts for almost 20 per cent of originations, fell by 9.6 per cent to €3.8m.
Spanish originations fell by 40 per cent to €154,247.
“This is expected, as we’ve temporarily closed the market to most new originations as we monitor data to change our internal risk-scoring models,” Bondora said.
The platform announced in May that the Spanish market had ““declined abruptly due to changes we’ve made to our internal risk-scoring calculations.” It said at the time that it was “working on further improving our creditworthiness assessment process to ensure we’re onboarding the right customers to keep our loan portfolio stable.”
Bondora also revealed in its latest update that investment volumes declined by four per cent month-on-month in May to €19.3m.
“Despite the decline, this is the third-highest investment figure in 2023,” Bondora said in a blog post on its website. “This is partly thanks to the Go & Grow monthly investment limit being raised to €700 in May.”
May was “an exceptional month” for collections and recoveries, Bondora said, with an overall increase of 2.8 per cent from April.
92,528 loan payments were recovered, while cash recovery rose by 100.3 per cent to €1,8m.
“As the year progresses, the recovery rate will likely decline again unless we continue to see impressive recovery statistics,” Bondora said.