Kviku Finance Analysis

Kviku Finance is an investment platform based in Cyprus by the parent company Kviku Group that connects investors to their global web of short-term consumer loans. The Kviku investment platform originally launched in February 2020 at a critical time with portfolios of loans in both Russian and Ukraine. The company’s loans are typically of a small size, focusing on virtual credit cards, POS crediting, or installment loans. Since launching Kviku Group in 2013 the company has facilitated more than €100 millions in loans, while the platform have funded over €30 million and in the past year an average of €840,000 every month.

• Digital investment platform for Kviku Group’s global web of loan originators
• Short-term debt instruments, including BNPL and Installment loans
• Automatically investment based on pre-defined filters with an average annual interest rate of 12% in five different countries
• Reports of questionable business practices by Mintos on war affected loans and in the Spanish loan originator by Kviku Group

Kviku Finance’s loan originators offer three main types of consumer-facing loans in currently five different goegraphies: Phillipines, Kazahkstan, Ukraine, Poland and Spain. Manually selecting individual loans is not an option at Kviku, so it is only possible to automatically invest in the loans based on pre-defined filters such as period of repayment, interest rate and geography.^[1]

The types of loans available starting at a minimum investment of €5 covers Buy-Now-Pay-Later loans up to €2,000, Installment loans up to €3,000 and Virtual Credit Card loans up to €1,000. The platform does not offer a secondary market for early exiting investments, but offers a buyback guarantee on most of the loans that compensates investors for the invested principal and accrued interest on loans delayed more than 30 days.^[2]

The company boasts an average 12% interest return rate across its consumer loans, stating that rates tend to range from 10-15%. However, there are no dedicated statistics page or further insights into delays and default rates or the actual historic net return for investors since launching in 2020. Investors at Kviku are incentivized to refer friends and earn a commission by joining their referral scheme and also offers a loyalty program for users with more than €1,000 invested.^[3]

The buyback guarantee is valid as long as it is honored by Kviku and there are currently no fee's directly imposed on the investors. Therefor, it is safe to assume that Kviku makes money from the spread between what it charges the borrowers in the Kviku Group loan originator and what the investors receive.

Kviku Finance was launched in 2020 as an investment platform for the global loan originators owned by the Kviku Group. There are no insights into who works on the Kviku investment platform or the team of the Kviku platform. Kviku Group was launched in Russia in 2013 by Nikita Lomakin (current CEO) and Veniamin Lipskiy (current CFO). Following a successful launch, Kivku expanded to Kazahkstan in 2018, Poland and Spain followed one year later. Kviku went on to launch in the Philippines in 2020 and in 2020 to India. The company’s public plans show branches are expected to launch in Vietnam and Indonesia in 2023.^[4]

‘Kviku Finance’ was only officially launched in 2020, but its loans have also been available on various investment marketplaces’ since 2018, including Iovo Group, Bondster and Mintos.^[5]

For investors in the digital lending market, portfolio history can be everything. Kviku fails to publish past statistical loan performance or any deeper insights to the current loan portfolio. Kviku Finance is still a fledgling branch of the Kviku Group, but the company appear profitable. The company’s assets grew almost fourfold across 2020^[6], with steady growth across numerous metrics. Looking slightly broader, CAGR across loans provided grew 124% from 2017-2021; with a total of $158.9 million loans issued in 2021.^[7]

Kviku's war affected loans on Mintos is facing quite some headwind as Mintos is pursuing legal measures against Kviku with the latest update on Mintos from 30th June 2023 being “Kviku and its questionable business practices”, in which Mintos explains the challenges with recovering the funds for it's investors.^[8]

In Februar 2023 an article appeared on Medium stating that hundreds in Spain report harassment and threats from a microloan company of the Kviku Group that lends them money without permission.^[9] This article was also published in Spanish by the Catalan newspaper ARA.^[10]