Funding Report for April 2022
What happened last month in the crowdfunding and marketplace lending markets? Which platforms are on the rise, and which ones are falling behind? How has the sector performed over the last year? We look at numbers reported to P2PMarketData in April 2022 and dive deeper into this month’s focus: a (temporary?) change in marketplace lending market leadership.
About the monthly report
In the monthly funding report, we publish the funding amounts of online crowdfunding platforms. We track data from 76 participating platforms, operating in 23 markets and 9 different currencies. Please note that:
- We convert all amounts to EUR for comparison reasons, using exchange rates from the last day of the month.
- None of the numbers cited is an estimation – the amounts are reported directly to us or pulled from the platforms' publicly available loan books and statistic pages.
- Historical funding volumes reported below may divert slightly from volumes calculated in previous reports due to exchange rate fluctuations and the changes in the pool of platforms we track.
We've welcomed a new platform into our database this month – Heavy Finance (a direct marketplace lending platform based in Lithuania which offers agricultural loans). You can check out the whole dataset at p2pmarketdata.com!
Key highlights: What happened last month in crowdfunding?
A slowdown in the crowdfunding market continues as funding volumes have decreased for the fourth consecutive month. We recorded a total funding volume of €455m in April 2022 – a decrease of 11% compared to March 2022 (down from €508m).
Looking at the longer term, the sector has grown by 41% over the past year, at a 0.9% average monthly growth rate. The total monthly funding volume in April 2022 was higher by €26m compared to the same time in 2021.
Looking at funding across the main investment categories, most funding in April 2022 went to platforms offering consumer investments (€219m), followed by business (€146m), and property investments (€80m). Consumer lending increased by 5%, while business lending, and property lending decreased by 24%, and 20% respectively, compared to March 2022.
Platforms’ performance: How did the key players do in April 2022?
Opyn funded the most loans in April 2022, followed by Mintos and Credimi. Overall, the five largest platforms accounted for 49% of the total funding volume recorded in our database, while the ten largest platforms funded 64% of the total volume. The largest players were most likely to be direct marketplace lending platforms (5 out of 10) come from Italy (2 out of 10) and offer consumer investments (6 out of 10).
Esketit – a resale marketplace lending platform from Ireland, offering consumer investments, has been the fastest growing platform in the last year, followed by Afranga and Max Crowdfund. The “rising stars” were most likely to be resale marketplace lending platforms (5 out of 10), come from Ireland (2 out of 10) and offer consumer investments (4 out of 10).
Viventor, Finansowo and Housers have grown at the slowest rate. Overall, the slowest-growing platforms were most likely to be direct marketplace lending platforms (7 out of 10), come from Latvia (3 out of 10) and offer consumer investments (4 out of 10).
*We only take into account platforms with total funding volumes higher than €10 million.
Finally, we reported several noteworthy milestones reached last month:
- Rendity, and NEO Finance have both funded more than €100m worth of loans since their inception.
- Lendermarket, Kameo Sweden, Kuflink, and Lend have all crossed the €200m total funding threshold.
- Mintos has reached over €8b of total funded loans to date. Congrats!
Deep dive: A new European marketplace lending leader?
First, an update: In the March and February reports, we reported the drop in funding volumes among platforms exposed to the Ukrainian and Russian markets following the Russian invasion and the subsequent market turmoil. This month, it seems, most platforms affected by the crisis have rebounded – IUVO Group, PeerBerry, and Robocash all funded more investment volumes than in March, and Twino recorded only a tiny decrease.
However, Mintos seems to be one outlier that is yet to cope with the retreat of investors. In March, we signalled that Mintos lost its position as the largest P2P loan funder in Europe (in terms of monthly volume) for the first time in our monthly report series. This month, Mintos again comes second, after the Italian business lender – Opyn. What seems even more concerning, Mintos’ decline has been ongoing for quite some time before the Ukraine crisis. One can speculate that the investor hesitancy has something to do with Mintos’ announced changes to its investment structure. Mintos Notes, announced mid-last year, will be launching on May 25th. Did this conversion trigger a degree of uncertainty for new investors? And will the investments take off again once the Notes are out?
There is, of course, the other side to this story. Opyn’s monthly funding volumes are currently on a high tide and generally fluctuate quite a lot, which is normal for business and property lending platforms with a fewer number of large projects compared to a steady flow of thousands of smaller loans on personal lending platforms. Nevertheless, Opyn managed to stay ahead of Mintos for two months straight, which is a telling feat, especially for a platform over ten times smaller than Mintos in terms of total funding volumes.
The picture of the four largest platforms in our database is also symbolic of the “competition” of very different business models in marketplace lending – two business lending platforms, open only to institutional investors, both coming from Europe’s most dynamic marketplace lending market – Italy (Credimi and Opyn), and two resale marketplace lenders with international exposure and mostly short-term personal loans in the offer (Mintos and PeerBerry). Which platforms will perform best in the future? We will continue tracking the performance of all key players and report on the most up-to-date developments in the industry!