Lending company Kiva has decided to initiate a wind-down of its business in Russia.
Denis Rudenko, CEO of Kiva: “Following extensive analysis and forecast for the lending market in the Russian Federation, we have concluded on the lack of a future growth perspective in the market for Kiva and have decided to wind down the company.
We see the current state in Russia is creating new challenges for our borrowers, as well as for us. The moratorium on borrowers’ repayments and related fees is in effect until September this year, with a possible prolongation, (read more on the Mintos blog), the state of emergency might not be lifted as soon. Currently, Russia is one of the top five countries in the world with respect to COVID-19 cases, and so far actions to fight the pandemic carried out by the government have been rather unpredictable. The consequences of these factors we have analyzed unfortunately serve as reasons contributing to the voluntary wind-down decision.”
The decision comes at a time when Kiva has enough liquidity to cover the buybacks for the non-performing part of the loan portfolio. Kiva will also continue collecting the repayments from borrowers and transferring them to investors.
What this means for investors on Mintos
While Kiva will continue servicing the existing loans, the company will not issue new loans to borrowers and will not place new loans for investment on Mintos. It is possible for the existing loans to be extended. The Primary and Secondary Markets will remain open for loans issued by Kiva.
So far the management of Kiva has shown a strong commitment to meet all obligations as the company collects borrower repayments, transfers them to investors and covers the non-performing loans. At the time of publishing, 8 July 2020, Kiva has settled all outstanding payments, having transferred borrowers repayments to investors on Mintos in full.
Kiva will maintain its recently updated Mintos Rating of C.
As Kiva will continue servicing existing loans, there will be no automatic changes to investors’ Auto Invest strategies. Investors who wish to reconsider their investment preferences are advised to manually update their settings.
About Kiva
Kiva is a consumer finance brand in the Russian Federation and part of Finko group. Kiva loans on the Mintos platform are portrayed as Finko RU. The current amount of Kiva outstanding portfolio on Mintos is € 3 494 906. There are 31 556 investors with active investments in Kiva loans, with the average investment per investor being € 110.
