2019 has been an exciting and dynamic ride on Mintos. Besides launching a new product, doubling volumes of investments on the marketplace and almost tripling our team, we moved to a new head office and revamped our brand. More importantly, we have done some hard and profound work in all teams that constitute Mintos, establishing new standards for investing in loans globally.
We’re entering 2020 with significant milestones in our track record and with many new learnings valuable for everyone involved in investing in loans at a global scale.
What has marked 2019 in Mintos?
Let’s take a look.
The numbers
After reaching the first billion euros funded in loans on Mintos in August 2018, the next three milestones came in 2019: EUR 2 billion of loans funded in April, EUR 3 billion in August, and EUR 4 billion in November. This impressive growth rate illustrates not only demand for the Mintos service, but overall growing interest in investing in loans among individual investors globally.
In 2019, 136 310 new investors joined Mintos, and we’ve ended a year with a total of 234 857 investors on the marketplace. The number of new investors joining Mintos was almost 150% higher in 2019 than in 2018. In total, last year investors on Mintos earned EUR 45 million in interest. On average, a single Mintos investor has an outstanding balance of EUR 4 725 invested across 241 different loans.
Loans in the amount of EUR 185.4 million were sold on the Secondary Market during 2019, proving that there is a lot of liquidity for those that want to exit their investment before loan term – one of the traits that investors appreciate about Mintos.
Growth and expansion
Looking at the volumes of total loans funded, Mintos is the leading marketplace for investments in loans in Europe, according to Brismo market data. The total of loans funded on the European platforms during the last 12 months was EUR 6.36 billion. To this total, Mintos contributed with EUR 2.57 billion, or 40% of the total observed market (the United Kingdom excluded).
In 2019, we have expanded our presence to new markets. Investors on Mintos now come from 67 countries – 13 of them were added last year with new investors joining daily. loan originators pool was boosted with 5 new countries (Belarus, Indonesia, Namibia, Turkey, Vietnam). In total, 29 new loan originators joined Mintos last year, further increasing the unmatched supply of loans on our marketplace.
The last year also brought us new learnings. While almost 70 loan originators continue to offer services to its borrowers, five of them experienced issues which affected investors on Mintos. We thank our investors for their patience while we work and react to each situation with the best interests of our investors in mind. We remain committed to working on these situations in the same manner.
We have successfully scaled our team to facilitate the growth of the Mintos marketplace. Overall, more than 120 new talents joined Mintos in 2019, as our team grew by three times compared to 2018. We have opened new offices in Berlin, Germany, and in Vilnius, Lithuania, in addition to our head office in Riga, Latvia. Today, the 180 people of the Mintos team come from 20 countries of the world, boosting our cultural diversity and global experiences.
In addition to bringing new forces to the existing teams, we formed new teams that now count dozens of professionals: Legal Team, Anti-Money Laundering Team, International Expansion Team, and Communications Team. We also added new teams within the Product and Engineering: Mobile App and Payments Teams. Our Investor Service Team has expanded significantly too – today a 20 person strong team speaks in 11 languages, with the first response to investors’ inquiry happening in one to two hours after the tickets have been received.
Mintos product log
The two most significant projects in 2019 on the product side were Invest & Access launched in June 2019, and the Mintos mobile app, with the beta version for iOS launched in December.
Six months after the launch, around 8.5% of Mintos investors use Invest & Access exclusively to invest in loans on the marketplace.
Today, the Mintos mobile app beta for iOS is in the testing phase, distributed to 500 Mintos beta testers. The Mintos mobile app beta for Android has been distributed for testing in January 2020. The Mintos mobile app for the public will be launched in the first quarter of 2020.
In 2019 we made good progress on acquiring EU e-money licence, with work still to be done.
And, like anyone going through high growth, we also encountered bugs and issues on our marketplace during the year. In each case, our Engineering Team and other involved teams have been working hard to solve all issues as fast as possible. We want to say thank you to all those letting us know if something seems off on the marketplace and giving feedback about the fixes. We know we can always do better and offer an even better service and value to our investors.
Awards and recognition
In 2019 the recognition of our work has come in the form of Mintos being the only double-award winner at the AltFi Awards 2019. We are proud to have earned the title “Alternative Finance Platform of the Year 2019”, and, for the fourth year in a row, we were voted as the winner of the “People’s Choice Award” by our investors. We are also proud to be listed in the prestigious Deloitte’s Technology Fast 50 industry report, in the Rising Star category as one of the fastest developing fintech companies in Central Europe.
We are deeply thankful for another successful year to all our investors and loan originators all around the globe.
Looking forward to a successful and lucrative 2020!
Your Mintos team
