Twino Review: Is it good? Don't invest before you read this!
Author
Reza Machdi-Ghazvini, CAIAWhat is Twino?
Twino is a P2P platform from Riga in Latvia, founded in 2015.
It is a subsidiary of SIA Twino, which is also based in Latvia.
On Twino, almost universally, P2P loans are offered by loan brokers (loan originators) that belong to the same company.
Since its inception, the platform has funded more than €1 billion worth of loans, making it one of the largest P2P platforms in Europe.
How does Twino make money?
Twino is a subsidiary of SIA Twino and therefore passes on its profits and losses to the parent company.
The parent company earns its money mainly through interest income, with additional income from commissions and other operational business.
Who owns Twino?
The platform belongs to the financial company SIA Twino, which was founded in 2009 by Armands Broks.
He still owns 100% of the shares of the company.
How safe (reputable) is Twino? Is Twino legal?
Twino is officially supervised by the Latvian Financial Market Authority, a feature that indicates a high level of seriousness.
Moreover, the platform has brokered more than €1 billion worth of loans, which should further confirm its seriousness.
Because of this, we would rate the platform as safe, pursuing a legitimate business purpose.
How does Twino work?
To invest on Twino, you first need to register online and then deposit money via a bank transfer.
With your first deposit via a standard bank transfer, you also confirm the bank account to which withdrawals can be made.
After that you can invest directly in the offered credits.
You have to invest at least 10 € and you can invest either manually or automatically through Auto Invest.
Moreover, you can invest in two markets: the primary market (initial issuance of loans) or the secondary market (loans from other investors).
In Twino you do not invest directly in loans, but through securities in loan pools (multiple loans).
These securities are collateralized with these loans and accordingly their value depends on them.
That\'s why they are called asset-backed securities and they are also known as asset-backed securities.
The securities differ according to:
Country (origin of the loans),
Interest rate (coupon),
maturity and
Amount (volume).
The best way to do this is to look at a simple example.
Example of a security on Twino
Country: Poland
Interest rate: 12
Maturity: 6 months
Amount: 350.000 €
If you were to invest €3,500 in this security, you would invest in 1% of the bundled loans.
All securities offered on Twino have an official security identification number (ISIN or WKN), as you may know from other securities such as ETFs or stocks.
How can I invest on Twino?
On the platform, you can choose each individual loan in which you want to invest.
Among other things, this makes sense if you\'re just starting out investing and don\'t want to wait for Auto Invest to invest for you.
Or if you want to invest in the secondary market, because you cannot automatically invest in the loans on the secondary market.
The platform offers an automatic investment function, Auto Invest.
With it, you can specify which loans you want to invest in.
The following settings are possible:
Interest rate,
countries and
maturities.
However, you cannot select the maximum amount you want to invest per security.
However, since you invest in several loans via one security on Twino anyway (loan pool), we think this is fine.
We like Auto Invest very much, it is slim and easy to use.
In our opinion, however, the option to also automatically invest in loans on the secondary market is missing.
This would be helpful especially when there are no loans offered on the primary market.
What warning signals should be observed with Twino?
At the moment, we have not noticed any warning signals with Twino.