Mintos Review: Is it good? Don't invest before you read this!
Author
Reza Machdi-Ghazvini, CAIAWhat is Mintos?
Mintos is a P2P platform from Riga, Latvia, founded in 2014.
It brokers P2P loans between investors and loan brokers (loan originators) who are independent of the platform.
This explains why Mintos is also called a P2P marketplace, and why there have been several spin-offs of intermediaries in the past.
Two good examples are the platforms Esketit and Lendermarket, which used to be active only as loan intermediaries on Mintos and still partially offer loans on Mintos, respectively.
Since its inception, the platform has funded more than €8 billion worth of P2P loans, making it the largest P2P platforms in Europe.
How does Mintos make money?
Mintos makes its money from three revenue streams:
Commissions from loan brokers
One-time transaction fees from loan brokers
Foreign currency fees for investors
The most important source of revenue is commissions from loan brokers: they represent about 90% of the total revenue.
Who owns Mintos?
To date, ownership of Mintos has not been finally clarified.
In any case, it can be assumed that the two founders Martin Sulte and Martin Valters are still involved in the company today.
On the About Us page of Mintos, other investors are mentioned by name who were involved in the founding:
Maris Keiss (co-founder of 4finance and Mogo or Eleving),
Aigars Kesenfelds (co-founder of 4finance and Mogo or Eleving),
Kristaps Ozols (co-founder of 4finance and Mogo or Eleving) and
Alberts Pole (co-founder of 4finance and Mogo or Eleving).
However, it is not possible to clarify whether all of the aforementioned individuals still hold shares in Mintos today.
In this context, however, it is often speculated that, in addition to the two founders, Aigars Kesenfelds holds large shares in the platform.
Furthermore, Mintos raised more than €6.55 million on Crowdcube in 2020 via a crowdfunding campaign.
How safe (reputable) is Mintos? Is Mintos legal?
From our point of view, there is no doubt about the safety of Mintos.
As mentioned, the platform is supervised by the Latvian Financial Market Authority and a funded loan volume of more than €8 billion already speaks for itself.
How does Mintos work?
If you want to invest on Mintos, you first need to register as an investor and deposit money via a bank transfer.
Incidentally, with this deposit you also confirm the account to which withdrawals can be made.
After that, you can invest directly in the offered loans.
You only have to pay a minimum investment fee of 50 € and you can invest either manually or automatically via Auto Invest.
Furthermore, you can invest in two markets on Mintos: That is the primary market (initial issuance of loans) or the secondary market (loans from other investors).
On Mintos you do not invest directly in loans, but through securities in loan pools (multiple loans).
These securities are secured with these loans and accordingly their value depends on them.
That\'s why they are also 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).
Below we will look at a simple example.
Example of a security on Mintos (Mintos Note)
Country: Kazakhstan
Interest rate: 21
Term: 3 years
Amount: 500.000 € (converted)
If you would invest €5,000 in this security, you would invest over it in 1% of the bundled loans.
Each security on Mintos has an official security identification number (ISIN or WKN), which you may know from other securities such as ETFs or stocks.
Mintos Risk Scores
A special feature of Mintos are the Risk Scores.
The Mintos Risk Scores are intended to give investors an idea of how reliable a loan provider is.
The scores (ratings) with the corresponding risk levels are:
Low Risk: 10 to 8
Medium risk: 7 to 5
Increased risk: From and below 4
What about withholding tax on Mintos?
The platform includes a withholding tax of 20% from your earnings.
However, with a residency certificate from your tax office, you can reduce the tax to 10%.
How can I invest on Mintos?
On Mintos you can choose credit manually or invest automatically using the Auto Invest feature.
With Auto Invest you can choose from three preset strategies that differ in their return and risk profile:
Diversified
Conservative
High-yield
In addition, you have the possibility to set your own strategy, where you can specify the following settings:
Currency
Primary market or secondary market (primary market is the default)
Credit intermediary
Interest rate
Term
Investment per loan (loan pool or bond package)
Diversification (Dynamic, Custom, Disabled)
Different from many other platforms is the diversification setting.
With it, you define the maximum amount of money you want to invest per loan broker.
For example, you can specify that you want to invest in the loans from each intermediary at the same proportion. To do this, you need to select "Equalize" in the setting.
What warning signs should I be aware of with Mintos?
At the moment, we do not see any warning signs with Mintos.