The Monthly Funding Report: December 2021
What happened last month in the crowdfunding and marketplace lending market? 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 December 2021 and dive deeper into this month’s focus: property investing during the pandemic.
About the monthly report
In the monthly funding report, we publish the funding amounts of online crowdfunding and marketplace lending platforms. We track data from 72 participating platforms, operating in 24 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 - Efinza (a direct marketplace lending platform, based in Estonia, which offers real estate and business loans). You can check out the whole dataset at p2pmarketdata.com!
Key highlights: What happened last month in crowdfunding?
A boom in the crowdfunding market continues as funding volumes have increased for the fourth consecutive month. We recorded a total funding volume of €671m in December 2021 – an increase of 8% compared to November 2021 (up from €619m).
Looking at the longer term, the sector has grown by 43% over the past year, at a 5.6% average monthly growth rate. The total monthly funding volume in December 2021 was higher by €206m compared to the same time in 2020 and reached its highest level over the last year.
Looking at funding across the main investment categories, most funding in December 2021 went to platforms offering consumer investments (€371m), followed by business (€149m), and property investments (€144m). Business lending and property lending increased by 7% and 58% respectively, while consumer lending decreased by 3%, compared to November 2021.
Platforms’ performance: How did the key players do in December 2021?
Mintos funded the most loans in December 2021, followed by PeerBerry and Opyn. Overall, the five largest platforms accounted for 54% of the total funding volume recorded in our database, while the ten largest platforms funded 70% of the total volume. The largest players were most likely to be direct marketplace lending platforms (6 out of 10) come from Latvia (3 out of 10), and offer consumer investments (5 out of 10).
EvenFi – a direct marketplace lending platform from Italy, offering business investments, has been the fastest growing platform in the last year, followed by Opyn and Kameo Denmark. The “rising stars” were most likely to be direct marketplace lending platforms (7 out of 10), come from Italy (3 out of 10), and offer property investments (4 out of 10).
*We only take into account platforms with total funding volumes higher than €10 million.
Viventor, Housers and Finansowo 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:
- Flex Funding has funded more than €50m worth of loans since its inception.
- CrowdProperty has crossed the €200m total funding threshold.
- Opyn has broken above the €500m mark.
- PeerBerry, and Fellow Finance have both reached over €900m of total funded loans to date. Congrats!
A deep dive: Property investing during Covid
In the September report, we looked at what was happening to business lending amid lockdowns and with the proliferation of government business support schemes. This month’s spike in property lending (+58%) draws attention to the crowdfunding property market. At the same time, attention in the media has already been drawn to the pandemic-induced housing boom.
The Covid crisis differs from “conventional” crises in many ways but probably nowhere is it more pronounced than the property market. In 2008-2009, the demand for real estate collapsed, triggering subsequent crashes in housing loans, house prices, property investments, and eventually the financial system and whole economies.
The Covid crisis caused an opposite effect – real estate demand spiked, causing house prices to soar – people were investing money they couldn’t spend in real estate. In the US, average home prices skyrocketed nearly 20% through the third quarter of 2021. But supply moved in the opposite direction – lockdown measures and supply chain disruptions slowed construction, and homeowners were reluctant to list their homes for sale during a pandemic. For example, there was a significant slump in housing investments in the eurozone following the first wave.
How did it affect marketplace property investments? Not much – property lending did trail behind business lending, especially following the first pandemic wave and initial heavy lockdowns. But generally, the property sector’s had a good time – it’s grown over twofold since before the pandemic and has almost caught up with business investments. Real estate platforms have hit some significant milestones, too. The UK’s current three biggest P2P lending platforms all specialise in property lending, while Europe’s leader EstateGuru raised a total of €5.8m in 2021 to finance expansion into Spain, the Netherlands and the UK.
What will 2022 bring? Most analysts agree that the boom will continue, although growth forecasts vary from 2.5% to 11% in the US. Property marketplace lending should remain a good investment in such an optimistic scenario as financing will be necessary to fuel the lagging housing supply. We’ll continue to track how the main P2P investment categories perform and keep an eye out for other emerging trends. Stay with us!
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