Moncera review July 2022 – Excellent reliability, low interest rates

Moncera offers mostly consumer loans in Euro.

The platform’s homepage mentions an average interest rate of 10.4%, but this figure seems greatly outdated. Indeed, for most of 2021 and early 2022, available loans used to yield between 6% and 9% annually.

Right after the war broke out in Ukraine, Moncera’s interest rates increased briefly before returning to their previous level. However, since the start of summer 2022, they got bumped one more time so loans with 11% interest rates are quite common.

In spite of the increase, this level is still lower than what most competitors offer :

• At Lendermarket, they commonly vary between 12% and 15%. However, in terms of reliability, Lendermarket really pales compared to Moncera !
• Esketit‘s rates range from 12% to 14% depending on the country
• Interest rates at Afranga tend to vary between 12% and 14% – but the supply is too low compared to the large number of investors –
• Loans at Robocash yield between 10% and 13% annually depending on the loan’s duration

Another difference with these competitors is the lack of short-term loans. Indeed, apart from a few exceptions, most loans are medium or long-term. Things have improved, though, as it’s currently possible to invest in 6 months loans with a 10% interest rate.

Geographically, borrowers are located either in Estonia or Lithuania. It looks like Placet Group also offers consumer loans in Poland, but they currently aren’t available on the platform.

Finally, the minimal investment amount is €10. This is the standard amount for P2P loans.

In addition to consumer loans, the platform has introduced real-estate loans in Spring 2021. There used to be only a small number of such loans on the platform. The loan supply then increased after Moncera became part of Placet Group. However, in Spring 2022, very few real-estate loans were published. The screenshot below is actually from my archives, as the actual page for real-estate loans is currently empty.

Another change since Placet took over is that most real-estate loans are now covered by a buyback guarantee. This added safety partly compensates the low interest rates. The delay for the buyback guarantee is 90 days. I normally don’t trust buyback guarantees on real-estate or business loans, as all platform which supposedly offered those turned out to be scams. However, in Placet Group’s case, it’s hard to doubt its reliability !

Interest rates for the secured real-estate loans are rather low, even compared to EstateGuru : 6% or 7%. A 1% bonus will be granted for large investments; the threshold varies between €2,000 and €5,000. The financed amounts usually vary between 100k€ and 350k€, and durations commonly range from one to two years – although one loan was 61 months long ! -.

One loan came with double-digit interest rate – but no buyback guarantee -. The borrower is Farmada; this large real-estate development company also funded several projects on EstateGuru. It yielded a nice 11%, and had a very large amount (€1,200,000).

All these loans are secured by a 1st-rank mortgage. The LTV The LTV (Loan-To-Value ratio) is simply the ratio between the loan amount and the collateral value, expressed as a percent. Smaller values indicate safer loans, where the collateral value greatly exceeds the borrowed amount. LTV values around 50% – 60% are usually regarded as safe. stands at a very reasonable level, with a max value of 61%.

They also all yield interests monthly. Surprisingly, the minimal investment amount for real-estate projects is the same than for consumer loans : € 10. Most platforms have a much higher threshold, often € 50 or even € 100.

I wasn’t a big fan of Moncera’s previous real-estate projects, as I doubted the platform’s ability to do a proper due diligence, or recover funds. However, now that the platform belongs to Placet Group, I tend to view them much more favorably. The Farmada loan in particular really looks like a great complement to EstateGuru‘s loans.

As of July 2022, there are close to five hundred consumer loans available, for a total amount of roughly half a million euros. Many former investors left the platforms as rated decreased in 2021; as a result, the supply and demand are now much more balanced than in the past.

The buyback guarantee A buyback guarantee is a guarantee provided by the platform or a loan originator. If repayment of a loan is delayed by more than a given delay (usually 30 or 60 days), the platform or loan originator will buy back the loan. The guarantee may cover only part of the capital, or in a much more interesting case, both the capital and accrued interests. As the conditions vary from one platform to another, it’s very important to check this point. provided by Placet Group triggers after 30 days for consumer loans. Both principal and interests are covered. With the exception of Robocash, most competitors use a longer delay of 60 days.

For real-estate loans, the delay is 90 days. Don’t forget that only a fraction of the real-estate loans on the platform are covered by a buyback guarantee !

The financial solidity of the platform’s loan originators is excellent. I also appreciate the large volume of information available about the platform.

Moncera was founded in 2019 by two ex-employees of loan originator Placet Group. Dmitri Pavlov worked at CreditStar before joining Placet Group and subsequently founding Moncera. The other co-founder and CIO was Aleksei Telitsyn.

In August 2021, Moncera became part of Placet Group, just like Robocash is part of Robocash Group, or Afranga belongs to StikCredit.

This is great news for investors, as this lending group is extremely reliable.

The fact that Moncera now belongs to Placet Group could be pointed out more clearly on the website. Indeed, there’s only been a slight change, from “Our partner : Partnership with Placet Group” to “Ownership: Partnership with Placet Group”. However, one more noticeable change is the introduction of the new members of the management board.

In Summer 2020, Moncera’s CIO & founder cited licensing as a priority for 2021/2022. However, unlike many competitors, there’s been no follow-up on this topic. After Placet Group acquired the platform, they mentioned that they would apply for a loan intermediary license.

Moncera is a bit more than one year old, so talking about a track record is rather meaningless. However, the financial solidity of Placet Group bodes well for the platform’s future.

Placet Group and its subsidiary Nordecum UAB (which operates in Lithuania) are regarded as very reliable. As of July 2022, Placet Group is the second highest rated originator on ExploreP2P’s ratings for Mintos originators, with a score of 79 out of 100. It stands right after Delfin Group (80 of of 100). For a long time, Robocash was number one, but after Russia invaded Ukraine, their rating got decreased from 82 to 72 in order to reflect the impact of the war on the platform’s lending activity in Russia.

Placet Group has been profitable for several years. Moncera’s website is unfortunately outdated and only displays the financial report for 2020. However, 2021 financial reports are available on Placet Group’s website. They were audited by Ernst & Young, which makes them reliable. In 2021, the profit amounted to roughly three and a half million euros, the same figure as in 2020.

Additional data regarding the loan originators is available as well; I appreciate this large amount of information.

Moncera‘s financial reports for 2021 were released in July 2022. They show that the platform managed to turn a small profit of €53,000. Previous year’s profit was even smaller – not even two thousand euros -.

Although the loans list is only available for registered users, Moncera reports the total loans volume funded and number of investors.

Descriptions for real-estate loans provide a lot of details. There’s also some supporting documentation, but it isn’t translated in English.

When it comes to consumer loans, unlike most other P2P platforms, only very basic data is provided about the borrower.

However, it’s not a big deal, as P2P loans are rather standard.

As of July 2022, Lithuanian loans from Placet Group are still available on Mintos. Let’s review the pros and cons of investing directly through Moncera.

Surprisingly, interest rates on Mintos are higher. They indeed range from 9% to 13%.

On Mintos, the grace period for Nordecum Lithuanian loans is 2 days; this will reduce returns if many borrowers are late. Funds in transit may also decrease your portfolio’s performance slightly. On the other hand, when investing on Moncera, there’s no grace period, and reimbursements are credited without delay.

The buyback guarantee delay is 30 days on Moncera, but is twice as long when investing at Mintos ! In all fairness, it’s not a big deal, as interests get paid by the loan originator in both cases.

Other differences arise from the fact that Mintos transitioned to Notes on July, as a requirement for becoming a regulated platform.

First, regarding the secondary market :

• It’s not possible anymore to sell Claims (ie, loans bought on Mintos before July, 1st).
• On the other hand, Mintos secondary market is still open for claims. Selling them incurs a 0.85% fee.
• Using Moncera’s “One click Exit” will cost only 0.5% of the selling value, which is more interesting. However, Mintos will pay interests which accrued until the selling date, whether the seller will lose them on Moncera.
• One advantage of Moncera is that selling loans is instantaneous. On Mintos, the seller may have to wait until there’s a buyer.

Also, the minimal investment on Mintos is now €50, whereas it’s still €10 at Moncera

Overall, there’s little incentive to invest on Placet loans on Mintos. I especially expect the higher interest rates on the marketplace to be temporary. The only advantage is to manage a diversified portfolio from different originators using a single platform.

For peer-to-peer loans, I advocate using auto-invest in order to save time. However, investors who want to invest manually at Moncera can easily do so thanks to an extensive set of filters.

Available loans can be filtered out using the following criteria :

• Interest rate
• Borrower’s country
• Remaining loan term

One additional available criterion is the borrower’s rating. This makes sense when the buyback guarantee doesn’t exist, or doesn’t cover interests. For example, Iuvo‘s buyback guarantee only covers the principal. Defaulted loans won’t yield interests, and thus it may be interesting to focus on the highest-rated borrowers in order to preserve the performance. However, as Placet Group’s buyback guarantee covers both capital and interests, it doesn’t make much sense to focus on the rating. In consequence, I include all of them when investing at Moncera.

Moncera‘s auto-invest used to be only available for consumer loans. However, it’s now possible to configure it to invest in either or both loans kinds.

It’s extremely easy to configure. The available filters are the same as when investing manually.

In addition, it’s necessary to indicate the target portfolio size, the maximum investment in a single loan, and enable or disable automatic reinvesting.

Finally, for real-estate loans, it’s possible to configure the schedule type, maximal LTV, presence of a buyback guarantee and mortgage rank.

One handy feature is that the screen displays how many loans match the current criteria.

Unlike most competitors, Moncera doesn’t offer a secondary market where investors can resell their loans to other investors.

Instead, investors who want to sell all or part of their portfolio can use the One click exit feature. Loans will be bought back immediately by the platform. The associated fee is 0.5%, and the accrued interests will be lost.

An interesting Moncera feature is the cooling-off period. It allows to resell loans during 14 days after buying them; there’s no incurred fee. However, accrued interests will be canceled, just like when using the One click exit.

Moncera‘s website is available in several languages : English, Estonian, German and Lithuanian. The English translation is excellent.

Registering my Moncera account was very quick. Because of 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. regulations, prospective investors have to verify their identity. Unlike my bad experience on a few competing platforms, I don’t even remember doing so at Moncera. I take it as a sign that their process is well streamlined !

Account funding is done via a SEPA transfer. Funds are processed by the platform immediately. As a result, they’re typically available the next business day after I transfer them.

However, several users complained of the slow handling of funds by Moncera‘s bank TBB Pank. For that reason, the platform has opened a second bank account with Paysera. Transfers using this account are expected to be much faster.

When it comes to cashing out, withdrawals are free.

In a purely subjective way, I’m not a big fan of Moncera’s color scheme. But that’s a minor detail; overall, the website is well designed and easy to navigate.

The dashboard displays the usual array of statistics about the loans portfolio :

• Account value
• Loan statuses and remaining duration
• Total income and accrued interests

In addition, a handy cash flow forecast – broken down either by year or month – is available.

Unfortunately, Moncera is among the many platforms which don’t display a XIRR. It still puzzles me why such a useful figure isn’t widely available !

The account statement can be filtered and downloaded as an Excel spreadsheet. The same features are available for the list of loans in portfolio.

The FAQ A FAQ is simply a compilation of Frequently Asked Questions contains few items, but its contents is well detailed. In contrast, the “How it works” page is rather succinct.

Moncera is a small operation and communication obviously wasn’t their main focus until now. Indeed, the platform doesn’t have a blog, and all e-mails I received were automated account summaries. Their frequency are configurable on the website; it’s also possible to enable or disable notifications on account change, as well as commercial information.

A good way to get in touch with the platform is to use Moncera’s Telegram channel.

Support is available by phone or e-mail. Until now, I didn’t need to contact the platform so I can’t vouch for the support’s quality.

I created my Moncera portfolio in May 2020

To become an investor you need to be at least 18 years old, be a resident of a European Economic Area (EEA) country and have a bank account in your name opened in an EEA country. An individual is recognized as a resident if he or she is a citizen, has a residence permit or is registered as a tax payer in an EEA country.

Moncera offers a great way to diversify a portfolio with consumer loans from one of the most reliable originators. It's a pity that interest rates have decreased so much ! Indeed, due the the higher interest rates, I personally prefer Robocash or Esketit. However, the inclusion of Moncera inside Placet Group is a very strong selling point for conservative investors.

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.