Recently Mogo, the biggest loan originator on Mintos, issued a bond worth EUR 50 million, with an annual interest rate of 9.5%. They also announced that they would buy back many loans from Mintos's investors using this new money since the loans had a 12-14% rate, which is much higher than 9.5%. I was not overly worried about it because only about 15-16% of my Mintos money was invested in Mogo loans and I thought I'd simply reinvest it in other loans.
Well, it didn't turn out that simple. All the free money the investors suddenly had from the Mogo buy-backs meant other loan originators started lowering their interest rates as well. On top of that, Mintos started a refer-a-friend campaign in July which attracted even more investors and more money to Mintos. The result was that interest rates dropped to 7-9% (when they had been 13-15% in May).
I was pretty shocked by all this. After a little thought, I decided I would rather withdraw the money and invest it somewhere else than buy loans at 9%. I mean, maybe it doesn't seem fair that I have some money at doFinance at 9% and refuse to do the same on Mintos, but I just have higher expectations from Mintos.
Most of the money I withdrew went to Envestio, which is a platform that offers loans to companies. According to their website, the platform worked with private capital for a few years and went public a few months ago. The main reason to invest with them are the high interest rates - 17% up to 22%! It almost seems too good to be true so at first I thought it might be a scam but then I read about another blogger who had visited their offices and believed that the platform was trustworthy. Well, we'll see but so far so good.
