Esketit review August 2022 – Great risk/reward & large loans supply

Esketit lists consumer loans in euro, which all yield interests monthly.

Interest rates depend on the country. As of July 2022, CreamFinance offers loans from Czech Republic and Spain which yield 12% annually – interest rates for Czech loans were actually recently increased from 10% to 12% -. More speculative loans from Jordan have a 14% interest rate.

For a long time, loans from Czech Republic were mostly long-term – up to two years -. However, they currently have durations of three months max. Loans from Jordan and Spain are very short-term, with durations shorter than one month.

The platforms also works with loan originators from Sri Lanka, Poland and Mexico, but as of July 2022 no loan is available from either of these countries.

Like most competitors, the minimal investment is €10.

In early Spring 2022, Esketit unveiled their Loyalty program. Several other peer-to-peer platforms such as Robocash, Swaper or PeerBerry already implemented such a program.

I must confess that I was a bit disappointed by the restrictive conditions.

• First, the minimal threshold is very high. Indeed, one must invest €25,000 in order to reach Gold Investor status and be awarded a 0.5% bonus. This amount is much higher than for example Robocash’s €5,000.
• Moreover, although the whole invested amount is matched against the thresholds, the bonus is only applied to loans from Jordan. As explained below, the lending company behind these loans isn’t profitable yet, and these loans aren’t covered by a group guarantee. They’re thus much more risky than CreamFinance’s loans in Spain or Czech Republic.

Investors with a large portfolio can reach Platinum status, which will grant a 1% bonus when investing more than €50,000. Again, the bonus only applies to Jordan loans.

Of course, it’s always great to have an opportunity for increased returns. However, the restrictive conditions are likely to exclude most investors. Indeed, the average portfolio’s size at Esketit is below €15,000.

Most peer-to-peer platforms suffer from a cash drag at some point. Until now, it wasn’t the case at Esketit, as the loans supply has always been large enough to meet the demand.

The total amount financed through the platform stands above sixty million euros and grows steadily. It’s a rather large figure for a recent platform.

Roughly 90% of the loans volume comes from Jordan loans; on the other hand, the supply of loans from Czech Republic is very small.

All loans on the platform come with a buyback guarantee – which is actually called buyback obligation by Esketit -. It covers both principal and interests, and triggers after 60 days. This duration has become the de-facto trigger delay for P2P loans buyback and is also used by most competitors.

In addition, all loans issued by lending companies from Creamfinance group are covered by a group guarantee. It means that Creamfinance will fulfill the buyback obligation if the lending company is unable to do so.

There’s no denying that Creamfinance isn’t as financially strong as, let’s say, Moncera‘s Placet Group. However, this lending group is solid enough to belong to a diversified portfolio. In addition, Esketit provides a lot of information regarding the loan originators and the investing process.

Esketit is a recent platform : it started operating in December 2020. It was launched by Davis Barons and Matiss Ansviesulis, the founders of Creamfinance.

Esketit doesn’t disclose any information about the borrowers. Basically, only the loan’s financial terms (interest rate and repayment schedule) are available.

The loan originators present on the platform :

• either are part of Creamfinance (CreditAir in Czechia, Creditosi in Spain and LendOn in Mexico)
• or belong to Esketit’s founders (Money for Finance in Jordan, Loanme in Sri Lanka)

A well-designed page provides an overview of the loan originators present on the platform.

Let’s start with the largest group of loan originators, which belong to Creamfinance.

I will first clear a common confusion. The lending group Creamfinance is totally unrelated to the crypto project with the same name (which is actually an acronym for Crypto Rules Everything Around Me). The latter made the headlines in October 2021 as it lost 130 millions dollars after a hack.

This confusion is apparently common enough for Cream Finance to start a re-branding process, as acknowledged by the loan originator’s co-founder David Barrons !

Creamfinance’s financial statements for year 2018 through 2021 are available for download. The group was profitable in 2018 and 2019; however, in 2020, it turned a loss equivalent to 2019’s 800k€ profit. Things have greatly improved in 2021, though. Indeed, the latest financial report shows a record profit of €3,400,000 !

It’s worth noting that this report underwent an audit by BDO, the 5th largest auditing firm worldwide. It’s thus considered as reliable.

As usual, in addition to checking the financial reports, my reference for evaluating loan originators’ reliability is ExploreP2P’s ratings for Mintos originators. They currently rate Creamfinance 67 out of 100 (or 68, as there’s a small inconsistency between the two ratings in the page). This score was increased thanks to the great financial results for 2021. It is much lower than for Moncera (around 80) but it’s similar to many competitors such as Lendermarket, Afranga or ViaInvest. It’s even getting close to Robocash‘s 72/100, as this platform’s rating was downgraded after their financial results were negatively impacted by the war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russia.

Regarding the Jordanian company Money for Finance, financial report for 2021 is finally available. It was audited by lesser-known Bakertilly, and show a loss of €200,000 JOD, which amounts to roughly €250,000 euros.

As this entity isn’t profitable yet, I decided to only invest in CreamFinance loans. As I’m getting more and more careful with my P2P investments, I consider that the 2% extra interest rate isn’t worth the increased risk.

Esketit‘s statistics page is complete. It displays various statistics such as the platform’s portfolio size or number of investors. A recent addition is a set of pie charts which show the loan statuses by country.

I’m actually impressed by the large percent of current loans. Few competing platforms provide this information, but based on individual users’ statistics the proportion of late loans usually seems to be much higher !

For Esketit, the war in Ukraine had basically no influence. Borrowers are located outside conflict areas, and the platform as well as its related loan originators have no relationship whatsoever with Russia.

Investing manually at Esketit is easy, thanks to a large array of filters :

• Product (aka Loan kind; the interface shows different labels for auto-invest filters)
• Country
• Interest rate and duration
• Loan originator
• Presence of a buyback obligation
• Remaining term and available amount
• Presence or absence of loans extensions

A handy feature is the ability to exclude loans already invested in. What’s missing, however, is a filter for the group guarantee, which provides an additional safety layer for investors.

As usual, it’s highly recommended to save time by using auto-invest instead of selecting loans manually.

Esketit allows to create several auto-invest strategies. This can be useful in order to split a portfolio between several loan originators, for example.

The filters for custom auto-invest are roughly the same as when investing manually. The auto-invest screen displays the number of matching loans, which is very handy. As one can see on the next screenshot, there’s no shortage of loans matching my loose criteria !

Ready-made investment strategies were pioneered by Mintos. This features aims at removing the burden of configuring the auto-invest by providing pre-configured auto-invest portfolios.

Esketit has three strategies available. Each of them invests in a distinct mix of loan originators, resulting in a target return currently ranging from roughly 12% to 14%.

Please note that although the screenshot above still indicates 11% as the lowest average interest rate, it should actually be 12%. Indeed, the relevant page on Esketit’s website apparently wasn’t updated to account for the increase of interest rates in Czech Republic from 10% to 12%.

It’s also important to realize that the returns aren’t fixed and will depend on the interest rates level throughout the investment duration.

The CreamFinance strategy will thus appeal to conservative investors, as all matching loans come with a group guarantee. At the other side of the spectrum, the Jordan strategy will fit speculative investors who are satisfied with the sole presence of a buyback guarantee. Finally, the Diversified strategy is the most balanced, as two thirds of the included loans will come with a group guarantee.

One drawback of the CreamFinance strategy is that in spite of the large loans volume on the platform, it can lead to cash drags. Indeed, the loans volume for Czech Republic is much smaller than for Spain – sometimes to the point of being nearly non-existent -. However, the strategy will always keep a 50%/50% ratio. As a result, if there’s no Czech loan available, it won’t invest – although there may be many Spanish loans available -.

Overall, these strategies give investors a large control over the risk they want to take. However, at some point loans from Czech Republic were long-term (up to 27 months). Investors who didn’t want to commit funds for a long duration had to resort to using the custom auto-invest in order to filter loans durations.

All strategies supposedly allow investors to exit instantly… depending on market conditions. As a reminder, Mintos investors who tried in vain to sell their portfolios during the first wave of Covid in 2020 realized the hard way that the notion of “instant” can turn out to actually be painfully long.

Although the CreamFinance strategy will be good choice for most investors, I prefer to use a custom strategy (using only CreamFinance loans). It’s easy to configure and allows me to control most parameters.

Like most competitors apart from Lendermarket, Esketit provides a secondary market for investors who want to sell their loans before maturity.

There’s no associated fee at all: the secondary market is free for both the buyer and the seller. The seller can set either a premium or discount; however, all loans currently for sale are listed either with a premium or at face value.

In addition to using the secondary market, Esketit may also rebuy portfolios for a 1% discount.

The filters are essentially the same as for primary market, with the addition of the loan status and premium/discount.

For a long time, loans from Creamfinance were also available at Mintos. However, as of July 2022 I can’t find any of them. Shall they be listed again, I will update this section.

Esketit‘s website is available in English, German and Spanish.

The English translation is basically perfect. It still puzzles me to see that so many peer-to-peer platforms have excellent translations, and other such as Robocash or HeavyFinance just fail to get it done properly.

The Spanish version of Esketit‘s website is very recent; it indeed went live in July 2022. It may thus contain typos or other mistakes.

The registration process is quick and easy. The KYC KYC (Know Your Customer) checks are procedures used by financial businesses in order to verify the identity of their clients. Most Crowdlending platforms will require a copy of an identification document (identity card, passport, driving licence); an utility bill or bank statement may be necessary as well. check uses Veriff and is thus painless.

Since April 2022, it’s possible to use two-factor authentication (2FA). When enabled, logging in will require a temporary password generated by Google Authenticator app. This simple step will greatly increase you account’s safety and is highly recommended !

The most common way to fund your account is via a SEPA transfer. My first transfer was stuck somewhere on Esketit‘s side, and I had to contact the support. Fortunately it was sorted out very quickly.

SEPA withdrawals are free.

In early 2022, Esketit announced a new – and rather unexpected – feature. Indeed, it’s now possible to deposit stablecoins (USDC or USDT). They will be automatically converted to euros. Crypto withdrawals are only possible in USDT.

I’m not a huge fan of the website’s color scheme, but it’s just a matter of personal taste. What’s important is that it’s easy to use and works smoothly.

The portfolio statistic on Esketit‘s website are rather complete. In a classical fashion, the portfolio’s overview displays the total received interests well as the loans statuses.

It’s also possible to visualize the portfolio graphically. I’m not sure whether this is a recent enhancement or if I missed it because it’s kind of hidden – one has to view the portfolio’s loans list first, then select “Show graphical information”. The handy charts break down the portfolio by interest rate, remaining duration, country, loan originator and loan status. A possible enhancement would be to show them in a dedicated page; indeed, the charts are currently displayed in a popup which is higher than the screen, which forces the user to scroll to view all information.

The transactions list as well as the portfolio can be exported to Excel. I only wish we could filter the transactions; such a feature would be useful for investors who want to list their deposits in order to compute their portfolio’s XIRR.

The FAQ A FAQ is simply a compilation of Frequently Asked Questions is very complete and broken down by topic. Moreover, the platform’s introduction on the “How it works” page is well thought-out. They even have a P2P Glossary which is extremely comprehensive.

Overall, Esketit is a quiet platform. New features or important information are sent via e-mail at most once per month.

One way to get answers from the platform is to use the Telegram group dedicated to Esketit. Indeed, the platform’s CEO Vitālijs Zalovs is present and answers investors’ questions.

For more specific requests, it’s also possible to contact Esketit‘s’ support by e-mail. As mentioned above, it was very responsive when the funds didn’t reach my account. I contacted them later as I saw a bug on the secondary market – several labels weren’t translated anymore – and it also got fixed quickly.

I created my Esketit portfolio in May 2021

Anyone who is at least 18 years old and older and has a bank account of the EU or EEA can become an investor.

Although Esketit isn't my top choice when it comes to consumer loans (that would be still Robocash), I appreciate the platform and the related loan originators. Thanks to their great financial results in 2021, I'm likely to grow this portfolio.

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.