P2P Lending | Investing in Platforms With Professional Support
Everyday is a new day full of opportunities. Some of those opportunities are bad ones, like you lose your credit card, or you say something silly and you lose your job. Or, you messed up your two-factor authentication and your stock trading application has gotten hacked. What do you do? You call customer service. Shit literally happens and at every company there is a team of individuals who are prepped, informed and ready to deal with the issues you have. In any investment vehicle or brokerage the customer service is one of the most important assets. Customer service has been known to make and break companies.
In this guide we're going to take a look at the customer service of different peer-to-peer lending platforms. Many platforms today have taken to a number of platforms to increase their coverage, and their reach and communication with their clients. Peer-to-peer lending companies can be found on applications such as Telegram, Twitter, Facebook, and Quora. If there is a social media channel, each peer-to-peer lending platform has an account on it. And if there is trouble, the whole world gets to see. That's what makes customer service so important in today's market, as it's broadcasted globally and everyone is watching.
PeerBerry
PeerBerry is the offshoot of a very prolific lending organization in Europe, Aventus Group. Peerberry is loan originator aggregator which means they host multiple loan originators on their marketplace to sell their respective peer-to-peer lending contracts. PeerBerry boasts a state of the art design that comes with a dual buyback guarantee. PeerBerry is a Latvian based platform founded in 2018. There is a 10 EUR minimum to invest on PeerBerry and yearly returns range between 9 - 12 percent.
Investors will primarily find consumer and personal loans on PeerBerry. A smaller percentage of their marketplace consists of business loans and mortgage loans. Returning to PeerBerry's dual buyback protocol, PeerBerry's loan originators are required to provide all of their investors a buyback guarantee in case the loan is late by 15 - 30 days, depending on the loan originator. The second layer, requires that if a loan originator is unable to service their loans then all the other loan originators will step in on behalf of the falling loan originator. The rules of the system protects investors and the loan originators, manifesting in a pleasurable investing experience for all involved.
PeerBerry has another approach to investing that separates them from the rest of the peer-to-peer lending businesses. The large majority of the loans that PeerBerry sells is already funded by PeerBerry and their partners. Investors are only exposed to a small portion of the overall loan contract. This results in very healthy loan contracts that are being taken care of by PeerBerry and their partners. The investors are simply reaping the benefits of an already existing, successful business model.
PeerBerry can be reached on:
| Medium | Details |
| Chat | Homepage |
| info@peerberry.com | |
| Telegram | t.me/PeerBerry |
| @PeerBerry |
In our experience we have found customer service on PeerBerry to be unparalleled. In terms of response time, quality and accuracy in solving our issues. PeerBerry responds quickly on their chat on their website, on their telegram channel and email.
Mintos
Mintos is the largest peer-to-peer lending service in Europe by several categories. Mintos has two market places a primary and secondary both of which are incredibly active. Mintos produces 1 billion EUR in loan per year making it also one of the biggest platforms in the world. Mintos is widely known as a European favorite. Investors on Mintos can expect a 10 EUr minimum and for yearly returns to range between 8 - 12 percent.
Since 2015, Mintos has been in operations and started out by offering personal loans. Since then, Mintos has expanded into offering almost every single type of loan available, consumer loans, auto loans, mortgage loans, business loans and even more niche loans that you'll be exposed too in their marketplace. Mintos offers multiple auto-investing strategies that allow investors to choose what kind of risk and return they would be willing to undertake. All loans on Mintos also come with a buyback guarantee, although less complex as PeerBerry, they are still a line of protection for their investors. There is generally a fee with using the secondary market that tends to range between 1 and 2 percent depending on volatility.
Not all loans on Mintos are backed by collateral some of them are unsecured consumer loans. However, Mintos has their own ranking system for investors which determine which loans are low risk and which are high risk.
Mintos can be reached on:
| Medium | Details |
| Chat | Homepage |
| support@mintos.com | |
| Telegram | t.me/MintosDiscussion |
| @Mintos |
Mintos' customer service is of a reasonable standard. Due to their large amounts of clients they have implemented an expansive infrastructure to allow their clients to easily navigate through their interface and issues. Unfortunately, in our experience, we have found Mintos' customer service to be very fast and able, though sometimes their quality and accuracy in solving the issue at hand needs improvement.
October
October is a French peer-to-peer lending platform that offers crowdfunded business loans to business that are considered small to medium or SME's. October is only focused in Europe and has many connections to political European frameworks like the European bank. Half of Europe's economy is dependent on the small butcheries, cafes, restaurants, small hi-tech companies and artifact merchants. October provides and establishes a line of credit into these small businesses so that the European economy can continue thriving.
October is a great platform with a highly dedicated team. October delivers low interest rates for projects that are very low risk. October has never lost any capital for their investors and continue to deliver high earning projects that are making a real difference in their respective economies. Their dedicated team uses extensive credit and background checks to ensure that their borrowers are legit and able to make good on their payments. Investors are also exposed to an extensive degree of information on their borrowers that they are funding. October uses a direct investment strategy with their borrowers and has a team of experts who are highly specialized in fund recovery.
There are no buyback guarantees on October and no secondary market. October prefers to have investors who are committed and not ones who are looking for quick profit. October is highly regulated and different EU countries have also provided October's investors with state guarantees. Which means in the case that a borrower defaults than the government has taken liability making many investors on October feel more secured with having their funds there. All loans on October are backed by some form of collateral.
October can be reached on:
| Medium | Details |
| Chat | Homepage |
| support@october.eu | |
| Telegram | t.me/OctoberEU |
| @October_ES |
In our experience, we have found October's customer support to be excellent. Fast, informative and responsive is the general attitude of customer support agents on October.
ReInvest24
Reinvest24 is a mortgage based peer-to-peer lending platform but approaches the entire microfinance model in a new way. Rather than selling credit backed by a mortgage, they provide temporary rental equity in exchange for credit. What this means, is that investors who invest on loans on Reinvest24 are giving money in exchange for being temporary share holders of the mentioned property. If the property is worth one hundred thousand EUR than a thousand shares would be issued and distributed over interest investor. Each share being worth one hundred EUR. Reinvest24 works with multiple local partners who operate rental agencies and other property related businesses. Once the property is funded it is taken over by a partner which then turns the property into a business and you as a share holder reap the benefits of dividends and capital gains.
The minimum entry requirement to invest on Reinvest24 is a 100 EUR and the yearly ranges from anywhere between 14 - 16 percent. Reinvest24 was only founded in 2019 and since their inception they have proven themselves to be an investment service worth strongly considering.
Reinvest24 is still a small operation with a considerably small investor base. Due to this, there are only a few projects open on Reinvest24's marketplace. From our own experience, that can be sighted in our monthly reports in our investment guide, you will find that Reinvest24 has been a great investment experience for us. Historically, Reinvest24 has yielded very high interest rates for their investors at a minimal risk. All the offerings on the platform are handpicked by Reinvest24's team. They have shown their team and management competence with all that they have achieved so far. As mentioned previously, there are two forms of earnings on Reinvest24, rental dividends and capital gains. In the business plan put forward on each loan, Reinvest24 draws out a way to may money on a monthly basis and then an execution plan to sell the property and capital earnings. The investors receive monthly payments in the form of rental dividends this is promised, but if the team is successful in their sale than the capital gains value may spike which we have documented in monthly report 6.
Reinvest24 offers no buyback guarantees but there are two marketplaces on Reinvest24's website, a primary and secondary. The secondary market is accompanied by a one percent fee per transaction. Reinvest24 is a great investment platform but we would advise it for more advanced investors as there are no buy back guarantees and the way to earn on Reinvest24 differs from conventional peer-to-peer lending.
Reinvest24 can be reached on:
| Medium | Details |
| Chat | Homepage |
| support@reinvest24.com | |
| Telegram | t.me/reinvest24 |
| @Reinvest24 |
In our experience, we have found Reinvest24's customer support to be very good. Reinvest24's team is always alert on all social media channels, ready to answer to their clients and customers.
Importance of Customer Service
If you have read up about any investment platform you will find a large amount of 1 star and 2 star reviews. The fact of the matter is the people who have a bad experience are more likely to share it than someone who had a good experience. One of the hallmarks of a better platform is they are out there responding to those complaints with reasonable solutions. The response time, the channels by which these platforms communicate and the quality of the support are very important things for any service based enterprise. Especially when there is money on the line, knowing that your investment is in the hands of an organization that cares, makes the investment experience far more pleasurable.
Verdict
There are many great platforms listed with excellent customer-service teams. Reinvest24 and October are both great candidates with a clear dedication to customer support. Mintos' customer service did not strike us as anything special. That being said, Mintos is a far larger platform and our prodding and poking may have not been enough of an emergency for Mintos to make a serious effort. With that in mind, Reinvest24 and October were always quick to answer any inquiries or concerns we had regardless of severity. None of them, however, responded with as much efficiency and accuracy as PeerBerry. PeerBerry has top-of-the-line customer service agents who, at the very least, come off as all-knowing and full of solutions.