Swaper Review: Is it good? Don't invest before you read this!
Author
Reza Machdi-Ghazvini, CAIAWhat is Swaper?
Swaper is a P2P platform from Tallinn, Estonia, founded in 2016.
On Swaper, only P2P loans are offered by loan brokers (loan originators) that belong to Wandoo Finance Group.
By definition, this makes Swaper a P2P marketplace.
However, since only the loan brokers from one company offer loans, in our opinion Swaper is a simple P2P platform.
Since its inception, the platform has funded more than €365 million worth of loans, making it one of the mid-sized P2P platforms in Europe.
How does Swaper make money?
Swaper makes money through the commissions charged to loan brokers by Wandoo Finance Group.
This is the only way of income at the moment, as the use of the platform is free for investors.
Who owns Swaper?
Although the platform is so closely associated with Wandoo Finance Group, it does not hold any shares in Swaper.
As far as we found out, Swaper is 100% owned by Chief Operating Officer (COO) Marina Tyulinova.
How secure (reputable) is Swaper? Is Swaper legal?
Swaper is not supervised by any official financial market regulator, which usually dispels any doubts about its seriousness.
Nevertheless, we would rate Swaper as a reputable platform.
There are two reasons in particular for this.
First, the platform has successfully financed loans worth more than €365 million, which would not be possible at all without a serious and legal business model.
And second, it mainly brokers the loans from Wandoo Finance Group, which is an established FinTech company.
How does Swaper work?
If you want to invest on Swaper, you first need to register as an investor and deposit money into your account.
You can make a money deposit via a usual bank transfer and, by the way, with the first deposit you also confirm the account to which you can withdraw money in the future.
For investing in loans, the platform requires a minimum investment of 10 € and you can choose to invest manually or automatically via Auto Invest.
On Swaper you can only invest on the primary market (initial issuance of loans), as unfortunately there is no secondary market (loans from other investors) offered.
How can I invest on Swaper?
On Swaper you have the possibility to choose each loan you want to invest in individually.
This can be especially useful if you are just starting to invest and do not want to wait for Auto Invest to invest for you.
The platform offers you the Auto Invest feature to automatically invest in loans.
The following settings are possible:
Interest rate,
Investment per loan,
term,
term of the auto invest,
Loan status (Current, Extended and Delayed),
credit intermediary,
types of credit (short term, mortgage, leasing) and
Buyback (Yes or No).
Auto Invest makes a good and tidy impression.
All the important settings we would like to see in an automatic investment function are present.
What are the warning signals to be aware of with Swaper?
At the current time, we have not noticed any warning signals with the platform.