The seven largest P2P platforms in mainland Europe
After a slow start, the peer-to-peer lending sector in Continental Europe has matured significantly in recent years. Auxmoney – the first major European P2P lending platform – was founded in 2007, just two years after the world’s first P2P platform (Zopa) was formed in the UK. Auxmoney built up a loan book valued at more than €4bn (£3.47bn) before it closed its doors to retail investors last year and moved instead towards an institutionally-funded business model.
Read more: European P2P market demonstrates growth in 2023
This has left a gap in the market for a new cohort of P2P lenders to serve the region’s existing P2P borrower and lender base. Today, there are several billion-euro platforms on the continent, and a handful of others are rapidly approaching their €1bn milestone. So who are the seven largest P2P platforms in mainland Europe now?
- Mintos
In the absence of Auxmoney, the Mintos platform has flourished. According to the platform’s most recent statistics, more than €8.9bn has been invested into the company’s loan originators, while €397m has been traded on its secondary market.
Investors have earned an average return of 12.5 per cent by investing in Mintos ‘notes’ – financial instruments which pool together bundles of similar loans to offer instant diversification to investors. The loans featured in these notes are collated from a series of loan originators across the world and cover consumer, agricultural, real estate, business and car financing solutions. This allows Mintos investors to add geographical diversity to their P2P portfolios, as well as taking advantage of the platform’s auto-investing technology.
- PeerBerry
With cumulative lending of €1.75bn so far, PeerBerry is the second largest P2P lender in Europe. The Croatian platform has seen stunning growth since it was founded in 2017. Rather than choosing individual borrowers, PeerBerry works with a number of global loan originators, which list available loans and loan parts on the PeerBerry portal.
Read more: Average P2P rates pass 10pc in mainland Europe
The company’s largest originator is actually wholly-owned by PeerBerry itself. Aventus Group has issued a whopping €759m in car, consumer, and real estate loans, representing almost half of PeerBerry’s total loan portfolio. Investors cannot invest in Aventus directly, only via PeerBerry.
The platform is currently advertising investor returns of up to 12.5 per cent.
- Twino
Like PeerBerry, Twino works with loan originators to source and deliver lending opportunities for its retail investors. Investors can access these opportunities for as little as €1, making Twino perhaps the most retail-friendly P2P platform in the EU.
The Latvian platform has processed more than €1.3bn of lending to date, with lending opportunities in Poland, Georgia, Denmark, Spain, Kazakhstan, and Vietnam. In 2021, Twino became a regulated marketplace. This means that investors have access to the Latvian equivalent of the FSCS – the first €20,000 of their invested money will be protected if the platforms go bust.
Twino is currently advertising returns of between 12 and 14 per cent.
- CG24 Group
Swiss lender CG24 Group was launched in 2015. It became Switzerland’s largest lender in terms of loan volumes by 2017, and it has held on to that title ever since. Lenders can back consumer, business and real estate loans, with more than CHF1.15bn (€1.18bn or £1bn) funded to date.
Its target returns range from three to eight per cent, depending on the type of loan chosen.
Read more: How to invest in European P2P loans with just €1
- October
Business lender October is rapidly approaching its €1bn investment milestone, making it the fifth largest P2P lending platform in Europe.
The French lender was founded in 2014, with a mission to “finance businesses better”. It accepts both retail and institutional investors, with a minimum retail threshold of €20. By the end of March 2023, the platform had raised €979m in funding, and repaid more than €672m to its lenders.
Its target returns range between seven and 12 per cent.
- Bondora
Since it was founded in 2008, 220,214 people have invested over €805m and earned €96m from Estonian platform Bondora. The platform specialises in consumer loans and business loans, which are available to clients all across Europe. While returns can range from between 7.04 and 15.04 per cent, Bondora has recently been focused on promoting its auto-investing service ‘Go & Grow’, which offers a fixed rate of up to four per cent per year.
- EstateGuru
EstateGuru is another Estonian P2P lending platform which was founded in 2014. Since then, it has funded more than €709m in real estate and business loans, from more than 155,000 retail investors.
More recently, EstateGuru has been attracting institutional interest, signing a multi-million euro funding line from Czech investment bank J&T Banka to fund real estate-backed loans in the Baltics. In May 2023, the platform was granted an ECSPR license, which will allow it to more easily expand into new European jurisdictions, paving the way for another lending boom.
EstateGuru is currently advertising annual returns of 10.88 per cent.
