Mintos review

Mintos offers an impressive array of loan kinds, in many countries and thus several different currencies. As usual, I’ll focus on Euro loans here.

Interest rates on the platform tend to vary a lot based on supply and demand. Indeed, after enjoying interest rates as high as 15% during most of Spring and Summer 2019, the highest interest rates in late August 2019 went down to 12.5%; this figure climbed to an insane 26% during the Covid-19 crisis in early 2020.

However, as the highest rates are sometimes offered by dubious loan originators, they’re not a good indicator of the expected performance. Indeed, as we’ll soon see in detail, several lending companies on Mintos have defaulted. Investing through unreliable loan originators may thus result in a capital loss, which will in turn lead to a performance much lower than expected !

When it comes to reliable loan originators, interest rates are currently in low double-digits area, or sometimes even high single-digit area. For example, they currently stand around 11% for loans from reliable loan originators ESTO, 10.5% for Iute Credit, 10% for Eleving Group (formerly Mogo), and as low as 9.5% for Delfin Group.

In spite of the interest rates variation, the actual performance of my Mintos portfolio has been amazingly stable throughout between 2019 and 2021, roughly between 12.5% and 13.5%.

Around half of the available loans are personal loans, around one quarter are short-term loans and more than 15% are car loans. The remaining loans are spread between business loans, mortgage loans, agricultural loans and invoice financing.

With a very wide array of loans to invest in, it’s not surprising that durations vary greatly – from one month for payday loans to more than six years for car loans -.

As of August 2021, the cumulative volume of loans funded through Mintos is close to seven billion euro. Needless to say that this amount is huge and liquidity isn’t a concern !

Most loans on Mintos are covered by a buyback guarantee. The delay necessary to trigger it is rather long (60 days). On the other hand, unlike other loan marketplaces such as Iuvo, all lending companies on Mintos use the same delay.

Once more, please realize that the buyback guarantee is provided by the loan originator, not the platform. As a result, it’s only meaningful if it comes from a reliable lending company. And as we’ll soon see, not all originators on Mintos offer the same level of financial stability !

In order to emphasize this fact, the guarantee actually got renamed “buyback obligation” by Mintos.

Although Mintos is very successful, their track record in terms of reliability leaves much to be desired. The culprit isn’t the platform directly – although it lost money in 2019 and 2020 -, but rather the way they select the loan originators. Indeed, as we’re about to see, the platform’s focus on growth has lead to the presence of unreliable lending companies on the platform. This has in turn caused losses for investors as the originators ran into financial or regulatory troubles.

Overall transparency is good, though. Many statistics are publicly available, including information on suspended or defaulted loan originators. Similarly, the communication has much improved during the Covid-19 epidemics.

In addition, Mintos was granted two licenses. It is now a regulated European investment firm, and holds an electronic money institution license as well.

Mintos was founded in 2014 and has offices in Riga, Latvia. It’s much larger than most competitors. Indeed, the platform LinkedIn’s page lists around 200 employees. The top management is introduced on the platform’s website.

Financial reports are available for download. The 2019 report was audited by Ernst & Young, while the 2020 underwent an audit by KPMG Baltics. They show that Mintos lost money in both 2019 and 2020. Indeed, the loss for 2019 was close to one million euro in 2019. 2020 was even worse, with a loss close to two million euros.

In spite of this rather poor financial result, investors seem to trust Mintos. Indeed, the platform raised funds through a crowdfunding campaign in November 2020; it allowed the platform to collect more than seven million euros.

Little detail is provided about the borrowers, which isn’t a big deal. Indeed, for peer-to-peer loans, there’s little point in selecting loans manually.

Mintos is among the first P2P platforms to be regulated. Indeed, it was granted two licenses in late Summer 2021 : an investment firm license, and an electronic money institution license.

As we’ll see, the licensing process has lead to several small evolutions on the platform. For example, Mintos now requires prospective investors to take a Suitability & Appropriateness assessment. The configuration of the dreaded auto-invest has also changed slightly.

However, most changes are yet to come. Among them, the introduction of Mintos Notes, which will be financial instruments backed by loans.

As of Summer 2021, Mintos lists more than sixty active loan originators. Although this impressive number includes twenty defaulted or suspended lending companies, it’s still a very large figure.

This huge number of originators is both a strength and a weakness for Mintos.

Indeed, with so many originators available, it’s hard to avoid having sub-standard firms among them. In May 2018, EuroCent went bankrupt; it was the first one of a long list of defaults. Indeed, the Covid-19 crisis lead many poorly-run lending companies to go belly-up. As of August 2021, there are seventeen defaulted loan originators on the platform; three more got suspended for various reasons – most often because of delayed repayments -.

As recently as in late April 2021, loan originator E-Cash was suspended from the platform. Indeed, this lending company decided to wind down their business. The recovery process was much quicker than usual – a few months – but resulted in disastrous 35% recovery level. In other words, investors lost two thirds of their invested capital !

Continuing on the topic of lending companies, it’s also worth noting that the shareholders of Mintos and several originators (such as Mogo) overlap – I will once again refer to an insightful article by Kristaps Mors, which points out many possible conflict of interests -.

Kristaps Mors also wrote a very critical overview of Mintos loan originators. It’s a great wrap-up of the risks involved in investing blindly in high-yield loans; however, the listed amount considered as at risk (€118 million) needs to be put into perspective. Indeed, it’s only a small fraction of the overall invested funds on Mintos (more than six billion euros since its inception !).

I also strongly encourage prospective and current Mintos investors to read our article on Mintos loan originators; it will help reduce the risk of your Mintos portfolio.

Very few originators were onboarded in 2021. However, in August 2021, a large batch of lending companies joined the platform. Most of them are located in Mexico. Mintos itself rates most of them rather poorly, with the exception of GoCredit which looks like a reliable originator. I’m thus tempted to think that unfortunately, Mintos didn’t learn much from its past mistakes !

Finally, like most competitors, the platform uses a mechanism called “skin in the game”, which means that the originators have to keep a portion of the loans (usually 10%). This supposedly ensures that the originators provides quality loans, as they will be directly impacted if the borrower defaults. However, the large number of defaulted originators show that this mechanism isn’t exactly successful – raising it to a 30% level like Iuvo does would probably make it much more effective -.

Since August 2018, the platform started rating their originators, from A+ (safest companies) to D (defaulted originators). Long story short, there were many critics about the usefulness of these ratings. Indeed, many defaulted/suspended credit companies were still rated B by Mintos at the time of default or suspension.

In order to address most of these issues, Mintos unveiled their revamped risk rating (now called Mintos risk score) in October 2020. It’s computed in a more transparent way, based on four different criteria – including the efficiency of payments’ collection, or the ability to actually fulfill the buyback obligation -.

The risk score is updated regularly. The latest update took place in March 2021, and didn’t incur much change.

Many investors still aren’t convinced by the quality of Mintos evaluation. And unfortunately, facts seem to prove them right. Indeed, in early February 2021, negative news regarding originator Sun Finance in Denmark started to circulate on various Telegram channels. This lending company is accused of providing wrong information to borrowers. At this point, the risk score for Sun Finance Denmark was 7/10 ! A few days later, Mintos announced that they paused the placement of loans from this originator; this delay gave informed investors plenty of time to dump their loans on the secondary market.

In addition, an excellent source of independent ratings for Mintos loan originators is the ratings computed by Explore P2P. While they’re rather austere and following the changes is a painful task, I consider them a great guide to reduce the risk of my portfolio. For example, Sun Finance Denmark was rated only 48/100, which in my opinion reflects the risk much more accurately than Mintos risk score.

It’s possible to configure the auto-invest to use only selected risk scores. Mintos re-evaluates the scores every few months; investors are strongly advised to stay informed of these changes. The platform will also send notifications as new originators are added, giving investors the opportunity to include them in their auto-invest portfolio.

Mintos is probably the only platform where investors can get such a dramatically different performance depending on their allocation.

On a Mintos-related telegram channel, one investor mentioned that “Mintos is the best story in my crowdfunding book”, while another confirmed that it was “much more work than ViaInvest, Swaper or Lendermarket, but (his) returns are much higher”. On the other hand, the comments on Mintos blog are filled with stories of investors who lost money, such as this one.

The culprit is once again Mintos’ selection of loan originators – and of course, our own greed -.

Mintos provides many statistics regarding the loan book. It also makes the whole loan book available for download, a rare feature.

Even statistics regarding defaulted/suspended lending companies are available. In addition, in case part of their funds are in recovery, investors will also receive a monthly report on the progress – or lack of progress – for the debt recovery process.

In 2020, several loan originators created their own platform. The trend accelerated in late 2020 and early 2021, and there are now many platforms related to – or belonging to – former Mintos lending companies :

Most of them keep on listing loans on Mintos, although sometimes at reduced interest rates. For example, Estonian loans listed by CreditStar on Mintos yield 14% annually, versus 15.1% at Lendermarket.

One may wonder if it’s better to keep on investing through Mintos, or to use each loan originator’s platform instead. In most cases, interest rates and loans supply on Mintos are likely to be lower. On the other hand, the loan marketplace provides unified buyback guarantee terms. Also, unlike several platforms such as Lendermarket or Afranga, it offers a secondary market.

Another aspect to consider is the relationship between the platform and the lending company. For example, Afranga belongs to Stikcredit and Esketit is part of to lending group CreamFinance. On the other hand, Lendermarket‘s ties to Placet Group used to looser; indeed, the platform was founded by two ex-employees. It was however incorporated into Moncera in August 2021. Yet another example is Lendermarket, which isn’t actually related to CreditStar, but has the same ultimate beneficial owner.

In the long run, lending companies may very well decide to leave Mintos. It’s already the case for StikCredit; indeed, they stopped listing loans on Mintos as soon as their own platform Afranga was available. They still list loans on Bondster, though.

While I encourage investors to take advantage of the auto-invest feature to save time, starting by investing manually can be less intimidating for beginner investors. While there are many available filters, the screen layout for manual investing looks much simpler than the auto-invest screen pictures below.

The filters include :

• Currency
• Interest rate
• loan duration
• Loan type
• Borrower”s country
• Originator and originator rating
• Presence of a buyback guarantee
• Status
• Amortization method
• Initial and current LTV (loan-to-value ratio)

The first thing to know is that auto-invest is now called “custom strategies” at Mintos, which can be a bit disconcerting.

The configuration screen can be rather intimidating, as it’s possible to configure it extensively for each originator. Unfortunately, as the number of originators grew, the screen became less and less user-friendly.

Even worse : this screen underwent a major redesign in April 2021, and Mintos managed to make it even more complex. Indeed, lending companies from the same group were previously grouped together – but still could selected individually -. Now, each lending company has its own entry.

As a result, the list is very large. Worse, there’s no way to easily find out which group they belong to. Sure, the lending companies names are often similar (for example, “IuteCredit Albania SHA”, “O.C.N IUTE CREDIT S.R.L.” and “FC IuteCredit Macedonia DOOEL Skopje” for Iute), but it’s not always the case.

I can understand the reasoning behind this change : indeed, all lending companies in a same group aren’t all equally reliable. For example, the risk rating for the different loan originators in Iute group have Mintos scores between 6 and 8. At the same time, most investors will usually focus on the group-level, which makes things easier.

In practical terms, the first step when configuring the auto-invest is to restrict the displayed originators by using the selectors at the top. These allow to choose :

• The risk score for the originator
• The loans types
• The borrower”s country
• The presence or absence of a buyback obligation

Even after filtering out the lowest ratings, the auto-invest screen is still rather intimidating.

Once the displayed originators are filtered, investors will be able to check the ones they actually want to use. For each of them, it’s also possible to select or deselect each loan type and buyback guarantee presence individually.

I discovered that it’s possible to go even further. Indeed, a dropdown allows to filter even more precisely, for example by LTV, issue date or investment structure. Needless to say I’m confident that very few investors actually use this feature !

At the bottom of the screen, two sliders allow to select the interest rates interval, as well as the loans duration. Finally, investors have to choose the portfolio size as well as the minimal/maximal loan size.

Like most peer-to-peer platforms, there used to be an option to reinvest the reimbursed funds. It was removed in Summer 2021, supposedly because of the regulatory process – although I fail to see the link between these two topics -. Funds will thus be automatically reinvested. It’s still possible to pause the auto-invest, though.

A handy feature is the neat option to diversify the loans portfolio across the selected loans originators. This will help mitigate the risks in case things go wrong with one of them. I strongly encourage investors to use this option !

It’s important to note that the the diversification settings will be reset when making changes to auto-invest settings. By default, it will use the respective loans volume for each originator in order to determine the target allocation. Investors who want to switch to equal-weight distribution will have to specify it every time they change their auto-invest configuration !

The often overlooked “Show matching loans” button allows investors to see how many loans match the selected criteria, as well as their distribution by loan purpose, country and loan originator.

Similarly, the very discrete “Available loan report” button will download a PDF which sums up the overall Mintos loans distribution. For each currency, it shows the total volume of loan based on Mintos rating and interest rate.

Finally, one noteworthy point is that it’s possible to create custom strategies which operate only on the secondary market.

Our article on Mintos Strategies and Bondora Go & Grow provides a detailed overview of the way I actually create my Mintos custom strategies. To sum it up, I now use a separate custom strategy for each lending group – in my case, Iute Credit, Wowwo, EST and Eleving Group.

There are several benefits to this approach :

• The auto-invest screen is much less cluttered, which reduces the risk of mistakes
• It also allows me to choose different durations and interest rates for each originator
• There’s no more need to bother activating the diversification option

In addition to the classical manual investing and auto-invest options, Mintos has gradually refined other options.

Pre-defined strategies were launched first; they were basically pre-configured auto-invests. Unfortunately, indicative returns were rather low.

In Spring 2019, Mintos launched Invest & Access. Its main selling point was its simplicity; the only configuration needed was the portfolio size. It was greatly successful among new investors; however, more advanced users wanted more flexibility, without having to resort to using the painful auto-invest screen.

Thus, in August 2020, Mintos mixed these two products together; they evolved into what’s simply called Mintos strategies. Let’s see how they now work, and how they differ from their previous iteration.

Mintos strategies are only available for euro loans; They blend these two concepts, while retaining the ease of use of Invest & Access and the flexibility of the previous pre-defined strategies.

There are now three strategies available :

• Diversified, which is similar to Invest & Access” settings.
• Conservative, which will only invest in the most reliable loan originators. It will use different metrics, such as Mintos risk score, loan statuses for the originator, or volume of pending payments.
• High-yield, which will invest in loans with the highest interest rates.

Using the Conservative method will prevent investing in Mintos’ most poorly rated originators. Indeed, in only includes originators with a Mintos risk score between 7 and 10. Unfortunately, as we already pointed out, the previous risk scores really weren’t foolproof and several originators rated B-, B or even B+ ended up being defaulted.

In contrast, the Diversified and High Yield strategies will invest in all loan originators; it makes them riskier, especially for small portfolios, which may suffer of a poor diversification. Mintos actually advises investors to have a portfolio size larger than €1,000 in order to get a proper diversification and decrease the risk.

What hasn’t changed is the ease of use which made Invest & Access a success. Once a strategy is selected, the only configuration required is the size of the target portfolio. That’s all ! This amount will be automatically allocated based on the selected strategy.

This simplicity makes it very easy for beginner investors to use Mintos. In addition, liquidating all or part of your portfolio is as simple as clicking a button; however, it will only sell current loans. Indeed, late loans will have to be sold manually on the secondary market – although it’s probably better to wait for buyback -.

However, I urge anyone who’s tempted to invest through Mintos Strategies – or, even worse, their competitor Bondora’s Go & Grow – to check out this article pointing the dangers of these investing methods and hinting at alternatives.

The minimal amount for Invest & Access used to be €500, but Mintos has since decreased it to €10. However, as pointed out previously, a small portfolio size may lead to very bad returns in case one originator defaults.

There’s a secondary market available, should you ever want to resell your loans. It used to be free for a long time, but the platform resumed charging a fee in Spring 2020. It’s currently 0.85% of the amount.

Thanks to the large demand from Invest & Access investors, selling loans through the secondary market is usually rather fast – especially when applying a discount -. However, at the peak of the Covid-19 crisis, it basically took forever to sell any loan, even with a large discount. Indeed, there was nearly no demand for loans, while at the same time many concerned investors were trying to decrease their portfolio’s size.

Mintos‘ website is available in many languages; the English translation is excellent.

Registering as an investor at Mintos is quick and easy. When it comes to 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. procedure, Mintos has chosen Veriff. It allows for a quick and smooth identify verification check.

In addition, as Mintos is now a regulated entity, investors must answer several questions in order to assess their level of financial knowledge. The platform may then restrict the investing choices to the ones it deems less risky.

It’s possible to fund your Mintos account either by SEPA transfer, Trustly or Wise.

Mintos‘ website is well designed and looks great. It’s easy to navigate and use most features; as I already mentioned, the only exception is probably the auto-invest screen.

On the other hand, the various screens or the navigation system are sometimes re-designed in order to accommodate new features. These changes may take some time to get used to. A striking example was at some point, several investors were desperately searching how to invest manually !

All standard reporting features are available at Mintos; both account statement and current investments can be exported as an Excel file.

In addition, I greatly appreciate being able to evaluate the diversification of my portfolio through a pie chart showing the originators; it’s also very easy to see the overall interest rates or durations. I only wish the fonts were slightly larger !

A long-standing complaint about Mintos reporting – which became more and more acute as new loan originators defaulted – was that the dashboard didn’t differentiate between funds in transit and funds in recovery. This has been fixed in summer 2020, and both figures are now properly displayed.

There’s a lot of documentation available ! If the How it works sections is too generic to my taste, the Getting started guide is informative, albeit slightly too concise. The FAQ is really complete and will answer most investors’ questions.

There’s an app for Mintos, available for both Android and iPhone. It offers a rather complete portfolio overview. Paradoxically, the charts are more readable on a smartphone than when viewing Mintos website on a laptop or desktop computer !

It’s also possible to create a new strategy, fund your account or withdraw money.

E-mail notifications from Mintos are configurable. It’s possible to choose to receive a daily summary e-mail, as well as notifications for deposits, withdrawals and bonus payments. In addition, opting-in to Mintos’ informative weekly newsletter is highly recommended !

The platform’s blog also makes for a good read as it serves to announce noteworthy changes.

In addition, investors are strongly recommended to join the unofficial Mintos Discussion Group on Telegram in order to get timely news regarding the platform’s originators. Indeed, they often surface there two or three days before getting published on Mintos – which, in case of a negative event, may result in the originator being suspended -. This delay is usually enough for investors to preserve their invested capital by dumping their loans on the secondary market !

It’s possible to get in touch with Mintos support by e-mail, live chat or phone.

I created my Mintos portfolio in November 2016

Both individuals and entities can invest through Mintos. Individual investors must be at least 18 years old, have a bank account in the European Union or third countries currently considered to have AML/CFT systems equivalent to the EU, and have their identity successfully verified by Mintos.

Family trusts, partnerships, limited liability companies and other organizations must have a bank account and be registered in the EU or third countries currently considered to have AML/CFT systems equivalent to the EU.

UK citizens, residents or taxpayers currently can’t invest on Mintos.

Many investors have expressed their frustration towards Mintos as many originators defaulted. I agree that Mintos' risk evaluation could be much improved - the methodology change associated with the switch to Mintos risk scores is a good step in the right direction, albeit not sufficient -.

However, in most cases, a well-managed Mintos portfolio can easily deliver double-digit returns with minimal risk. For intermediate/advanced investors, this platform is an absolute must. With the help of ExploreP2P's ratings for Mintos, they will achieve great returns with a minimal efforts. However, Mintos may not be a good platform for beginner investors; I especially recommend them to stay away from Mintos Strategies, and use our recommended alternatives instead.

More generally, I strongly advise investors to stick to the highest-rated originators, and spread their investments evenly among them. As already noted, investing in loans from Placet Group and CreditStar may be more interesting on Moncera and Lendermarket respectively, rather than using Mintos.

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.