Bondster review

Bondster’s overview

Bondster is a P2P marketplace; the individual Euro loans currently offer an annual interest rate up to 13.5%, for a duration between one month and one year. In addition to these, the platform also features a few real-estate and business loans, but they’re less interesting.

Visit Bondster’s website

My opinion on Bondster

Detailed ratings

Special offer

Get 1% cashback during 3 months after you register ! By using the code 05838 in the “promo code” field when registering your Bondster account, you’ll get 1% of your investments back directly to your account, at the beginning of next month.

Loans characteristics

Loans overview

Bondster offers loans in both Euro and Czech koruna (CZK); as usual, we’ll focus on Euro loans here. Note that while there’s a 1% fee for investments in CZK, investing in Euro loans is free of charge.

Most individual loans offer interest rates between 10% and 13.5%; there’s a large loans supply yielding 13% so it shouldn’t be hard to invest only in those. On late April 2019, investors also had the opportunity to invest in loans with 15% interest rate; these were an excellent way to boost already good returns !

Currently, all individual loans come with a buyback guarantee.

Bondster’s loans originators

Bondster has a dedicated page where they introduce originators^[?] (they’re actually called loans providers on the website). I welcome this transparency effort, as many platforms display little data about these crucial entities. As I’m writing this article, there are 11 originators available; some of them such as Lime may be familiar to Mintos users.

New originators are regularly added, ensuring that investors will be able to diversify their loans portfolio. In June 2019, they started adding loans from Tez Lompard; they offer a 13% interest rate and come with a buyback guarantee.

Buyback guarantee

The buyback guarantee covers both principal and interests; it’s available for all individual loans, as well as for a few real-estate loans. On the other hand, none of the current business loans provide such a guarantee. The delay depends on the originator, but is usually 60 days.

Platform’s features

Early exit

Unfortunately, Bondster doesn’t provide a secondary market. On many long-term loans, it’s possible to exit early, but the conditions may be draconian. Indeed, the investor may only exit at a yearly interval, and there’s a 1% associated fee !

Overall I think that this is aspect the main drawback of this platform; however, as I often emphasize, it’s not a good idea to invest money you may need !

Manual investing

It’s possible to select loans manually from the loans list, which provides many filtering options. As usual, I recommend to switch to auto-invest as soon as you’re comfortable with it, in order to spend less time managing your loans portfolio.

While they usually don’t make for a very interesting read, many details are provided about the lender.

Bondster’s auto-invest feature

The available filters are rather complete, and the screen is very convenient to use – although it could be a bit more compact -. Most fields can be safely ignored; most investors will probably only need to select the interest rate and duration, choose the installments and require a buyback guarantee.

One nice feature is that it displays the number of loans that match the settings.

Another great feature is the auto-diversification; it will spread your investments between all available originators. Currently, the only other platform that offers this feature is Mintos; I wish more peer-to-peer lending websites would implement this !

It’s possible to configure several auto-invest; this will mostly be useful for investors who invest in both available currencies.

Website’s ease of use

Funding methods

Available languages & translation quality

Bondster‘s website is available in English, Czech and German. The English translation is very good and I didn’t spot any obvious typo or awkward phrasing.

Bondster’s registration process

The registration process is very quick, in spite of Bondster‘s unusual requirement to upload both the copy of a proof of identity and a bank statement.

Account funding

The only way to fund your account is via a SEPA transfer. The funds reached my account in 2 days. As usual, the platform provides a reference identifier which should be used as the transfer instructions.

Website’s design and ergonomics

On a laptop or desktop, I really appreciate the overall design and the color scheme of Bondster‘s website; the only criticism I’d emit is that the fonts are be a bit small. Unfortunately, the website isn’t very adapted for mobile browsing.

The platform seems to listen to its users when it comes to the website design; the loans filters were recently improved to enhance their usability. Regarding the usability issues on mobile phone, they’re apparently working on it and it should be ready next quarter.

Reporting​

Bondster‘s reporting is rather complete. Apart from the dashboard listing the expected returns and loans status, you can list your current and past investments, or request account statements.

Documentation

In addition to a slightly succinct but complete Getting Started guide, there’s an extensive FAQ available. It’s probably the most complete one I’ve seen for a P2P lending platform !

I also appreciate that we get extremely detailed updates when features are added; for example, the recent auto-invest improvements were explained in a very extensive post that spanned several pages !

Actual performance of my Bondster portfolio

I just started investing so it’s too early to compute a XIRR. I’ll be able to do so in June.

Bondster’s main competitors

With its great ergonomics, Bondster may be less intimidating and easier to use than Mintos for beginner investors. Compared to Iuvo, it has the great advantage of providing a buyback guarantee that covers both interests and principal.

Overall the interest rates and ease of use are comparable with Fast Invest; Bondster’s only minor drawbacks would be the complicated conditions for early exit, and the fact that the buyback guarantee isn’t uniform between originators. However these are really minor aspects, and I consider that Bondster is an excellent platform for all P2P investors.

Bondster’s facts and figures

Who can invest

Any citizens of any country as well as legal entities can invest. The prerequisite is a bank account, which is one of the important aspects for authentication and compliance with the AML (Czech Act No. 253/2008 Coll., On the Legalization of Crime and Terrorist Financing). The bank account must be established at a bank within the European Union. In other cases, Bondster user needs to proof his identity and the origin of the founds according to Directive (EU) 2015/849 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 May 2015 on the prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering or terrorist financing.

Disclosure

Please note that this review may contain affiliate links. It means that I will earn a commission if you decide to invest after clicking through the link – at no additional cost to you, of course -. Please understand that I have experienced all of these companies, and I recommend them because they are helpful and useful, not because of the commissions I make if you decide to invest through my links.