It’s now one year since the Covid-19 pandemic began and, for the first time, the crowdlending industry experienced a major crisis. Some lending companies and platforms went out of business, while investors shifted from investing in loans to other asset classes.
However, since the end of the summer of 2020, we’ve witnessed strong growth in investors’ confidence when it comes to investing in loans, particularly in loans issued by more established lending companies with a more consistent supply of new loans.
As a result, the total funded loans volume in the last 6 months (October 2020 – March 2021) has grown by 44% in comparison to the previous 6 months of the Covid-19 pandemic (April – September 2020), when both investors and lending companies on Mintos faced unprecedented levels of uncertainty. From the fourth quarter of 2020 to the first quarter of 2021 alone, the total funded loan volume on Mintos has grown by 26%.
Funding volumes for some lending companies, including the largest and most established ones on Mintos, have rebounded even stronger over the same 6 months. Among the top 10 lending companies on Mintos, IuteCredit (+93.2%), Sun Finance (+76.9%), and ID Finance (+67%) had the strongest growth in terms of funded loans.
Mogo with €100 million loans funded and Sun Finance with €128 million loans funded, two of the largest groups of lending companies on Mintos, have further consolidated their positions, representing a combined 34% of the total funded loans on the marketplace in the last 6 months. Their results reflect an increased number of countries of operation on Mintos – 13 for Mogo and 6 for Sun Finance, as well as investors’ preference for loans issued by more established lending companies offering competitive interest rates.
The growth in funded loans volume has helped to increase the total outstanding investments in loans on Mintos over the last 6 months by 6.7%, from €385.9 million on 30 September 2020 to €411.9 million on 31 March 2021. The total outstanding investments in loans issued by the 10 largest lending companies on Mintos grew by 11.3% in the last 6 months, with some companies‘ outstanding investments growing by more than 25%.
It should be noted that, during these last 6 months, several large lending companies on Mintos – Mogo, DelfinGroup, IDF Eurasia, IuteCredit – have also either repurchased part of their portfolio or temporarily decreased their supply of loans on Mintos after issuing bonds or finding additional sources of funding. Without that happening, their outstanding investment growth would have been even higher. These companies plan to resume increasing their supply of loans on Mintos in the coming months.
Now, as we see lending companies continuing to grow back their loan issuance levels to or above the pre-Covid level, we expect a growing stream of investment opportunities on Mintos. We are also working on bringing new lending companies onboard that will further expand and diversify the range of loans the investors can invest in, including loan types and countries currently underrepresented on Mintos.
