Mintos Analysis

Mintos is the largest global investment marketplace for personal loans with more than 500.000 registered investors from all over the world. Unlike traditional peer-to-peer lending, the platform caters exclusively to investors and it is not possible to borrow money on Mintos. Mintos lets you invest in debt notes with 6 to 20 loans in each automatically, manually, or following one of their investment strategies.

• Mintos is the leading global investment platform for investing in personal loans
• Investors can buy fractional ownership in sets of debt notes with a unique International Securities Identification Number (ISIN).
• Mintos offers investments in loans with a high advertised average historical annual interest rate of currently 12.6%, originated by more than 60 partner loan originators worldwide.
• In addition to providing a Risk Score for each lending company on a scale of 1-10 (lowest to highest), some of the debt notes are covered by a buyback guarantee.

To start investing on Mintos you need to create an account as an individual or company and pass the suitability & appropriateness assessment test. After creating your account, you can start investing in debt notes to gain exposure to personal loans and other types of debt investments.

Investors can choose debt investments from more than 60 Mintos loan originators. The investments are primary personal debt (85%), in the form of primarily short-term payday loans and car loans. Most borrowers are located in Europe or in developing economies such as Kazakhstan, Albania, or Africa.

The lending companies issue the debt to borrowers in their local communities and are also responsible for collecting the payments from borrowers. In this setup, Mintos acts as a third party that resells the debt investments to retail investors worldwide. 

Investing at Mintos involves two main risks: non-repayment of loans by borrowers and default by the lender issuing the loans.

Borrowers who fail to repay their loans on Mintos are sometimes covered by a buyback guarantee. The buyback guarantee obliges the lending company to buy back a defaulted loan after 60 days without repayment. While Mintos buyback obligations are referred to as guarantees, they are not offered for all loans and are not always covered if an obligated lending company defaults.

Each of Mintos' partner lending companies is assigned a Risk Score; the risk score often reflects whether the debt note is covered by the buyback guarantee. The Mintos Risk Scoring system is updated every quarter and consists of four subscores that cumulate the sum:

• Loan portfolio performance
• Loan servicer efficiency
• Buyback Strength
• Corporation Structure

A vibrant secondary market exists at Mintos for selling debt notes before maturity. The company offers automated investing and suggests pre-defined auto-invest filters called "Mintos Strategies".

According to Mintos, investors have earned an average interest rate of 12.6% on all loans since 2015. This figure is based on all of the current outstanding loans listed on Mintos and does not consider defaulted loans and lending companies at Mintos. In contrast, the platform provides Net Return figures based on estimates of write-offs of loans by suspended lending companies, resulting in investors earning an average of 2% in 2020 and 10,21% in 2020.

Mintos charges investors fees of 0,50% for currency exchange and 0,85% for selling investments on the secondary market. Furthermore, an inactivity fee of €2,90/mo is applied when the investor has not sold or invested for 6 consecutive months. On defaulted debt recovery fees may occur but can never exceed the recovered amount.

Martins Sulte and Martins Valters founded Mintos. They hold the roles of CEO and COO.

Mintos has raised $16.4 million in four funding rounds since its launch in 2015. In February 2016 Skillion Ventures invested €2 million in the initial seed round, further raising their stake with €5 million in November 2018 in the series A funding round.

In April 2021 6,147 investors invested €6.55 million in the Mintos Equity Crowdfunding campaign on CrowdCube. The initial goal of the campaign was to raise €1 million, however, the campaign was oversubscribed by 655%. The Danish venture capital firm Nordic Secondary Fund also holds an undisclosed stake in Mintos.

Mintos has run with a deficit since the launch of the platform. They are therefore heavily reliant on outside investments to keep the platform running. If Mintos defaults, the Investor Compensation Scheme covers 90% of up to €20,000 of the investors' deposits.

Mintos offers debt notes with a unique International Securities Identification Number (ISIN). The issuance of ISIN codes is done in collaboration with NASDAQ CSD. The purpose of ISIN-issued debt notes is to comply with regulations and offer investors an extra layer of security.