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Georg's avatar

Hi Kristaps, keep up good job with keeping people aware of p2p lending risks.

I have used Mintos, Bondora, EstateGuru and Crowdestate (not active with Crowdestate anymore) and i was surprised that you rate Bondora so much less than EstateGuru.

For me they are pretty much at same level and I think even some shareholders are same (not 100% sure about that).

Bondora Chairman of the Supervisory Board is also partner/advisor in EastateGuru (Joao Monteiro) according to home pages.

I like EstateGuru, but main issue for me is that Management member (Mihkel Roosme) has quite big (1.5M in Crowdestate, not sure about EstateGuru) projects in both sites (EstateGuru) and (Crowdestate),

which are not handled correctly (missing deadlines and rescheduled). Crowdestate CEO also labels these projects as fraud.

https://www.aripaev.ee/borsiuudised/2019/10/10/crowdestatei-juht-kahtlustab-konkurendi-juhtfiguuri-pettuses

Few things i noticed without digging too much:

"Is platform regulated as a P2P investment platform by any government?"

I don't think that EstateGuru main body is regulated, only Lithuanian (daughter?) company.

On FAQ page EstateGuru declares that they are not regulated as there is no need.

You are giving points for being credit intermediary (Iuvo Group) but not for Creditor licence (Bondora) which is harder to obtain and more regulated?

"Can investors get all data to create their own reports about platform’s portfolio quality?"

and "Report about portfolio quality - detailed info about delays, defaults"

What data is missing in Bondora compared to ie Mintos? In my opinion no other platform offers so much information as Bondora.

If there are any ratings used, is there a report that shows expected return, based on ratings?

(Bondora) There is expected return chart https://www.bondora.com/en/public-statistics

"All important documents available (user agreement, claim rights, pledges, guarantees, etc)?"

(Mintos) If i would ask you to get all documents regarding Varks would you really say that all important ones are available?

"Platform is advertising returns that cannot be achieved at all or only in specific/lucky cases"

-2 for Bondora seems harsh as most investors use Go&Grow and get excactly what advertised (at least so far).

"Creative accounting is used to hide or postpone bad debt?"

Why you rate Bondora with -2. I'm not aware about any major issues, but maybe i'm missing something.

Both Crowdestate and EstateGuru have rescheduled loans and changed contracts without access to originals anymore. Difficult to give examples but there are probably complaints visible in LHV forum https://fp.lhv.ee/forum/invest/132377 and https://fp.lhv.ee/forum/invest/132610 if you want to mess with estonian translation.

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Matthias's avatar

Very valuable information Kristaps, I wish this I read this before becoming one of those gullible new investors who lost some small sum in one of the platforms you rated. I'm wondering if you could include the Iuvo, Bondster and October platforms next time. I'd also be interested in Fellow Finance.

Also, I'm very positive you include some information about your own positions and possible bias. You really encourage me to do research myself.

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