TWINO – Next Investment

Our next FinTech investment was made, through the originally Latvian platform TWINO, already present in many European countries and counting among the largest among the new batch of peer-to-peer lenders.

Perhaps most interesting in this platform are the relatively high interests, with most loans offering around 10% per year. They combine previously seen features such as offering guaranteed repayment and offering multi-country loan. They also offer guaranteed repayment or interest in a part of them. Unlike the previous investment in Younited Credit, TWINO doesn’t bundle  credits but offers instead choice among individual loans. Alternatively, investors can set up an auto-investment with pre-chosen criteria.

Let’s jump right into positives and negatives of this first experience with this FinTech:

TWINO positive features

– High expected returns on investment;

– Hability to choose projects, including rates and country of borrower;

– Options of guaranteeing the loan amount or even the interests in a part of your portfolio;

– Regular communication is alright, they send clients daily emails with all account movements and statement.

Where the offer falls short

– No estimate on percentage of defaults, which makes the guarantee option almost a requirement for my manual investments;

– Restricted project availability is a problem. To test it fully, I decided to invest 2000€ from the start, but investing the full amount was difficult, they simply didn’t have enough projects regularly available. To get enough projects in, I had to log in at night when new projects come online and also invest in relatively small projects to get my initial amount invested;

– As positive as regular communication is, as I was reviewing this text I got their latest portfolio status indicating that my account currently has less money than I originally put in, apparently because of an early repayment with a discount;

– Looking more carefully after logging into TWINO, there was an early repayment with interests, and the loss in my account relates instead to currency fluctuation. In principle there is no problem with taking currency risk on my side, but not sure if I would have bet on the Russian Ruble should I have an option. Loss is still small, will keep testing it, but can’t say this was the best start using a new FinTech.

Financials

– Initial invested amount of 2000 Euros, half of which within an auto-invest mandate;

– Average expected return of around 6 % p.a. in my own calculations considering expected interests this year. Most loans average 10% nominal rates, so unsure what to expect, but will keep publishing the results;

– Percentage of portfolio with guaranteed principal is 43% and the remaining 57 % have both principal plus interests guaranteed.