Not losing money in P2P is almost impossible. Quality of financial reporting is bad, platform rules are changed all the time, debt recovery is slow and hard, and many platforms take advantage of inexperienced retail investors.

If you can avoid the frauds and badly managed platforms, you will already be ahead of most other P2P investors.

Questionable P2P platforms

Here is an updated list of platforms that I suggest to avoid. If you are invested in any of them and still have the ability to withdraw funds, that might be a good idea to consider:

Source: p2p.holdings/questionable-platforms

Which platforms are the next P2P disasters?

In 2020 the biggest pain to investors was caused by Kuetzal, Envestio and Grupeer. In 2021 it looks like the losses will be much bigger and I expect following platforms to turn into next disasters:

1. Juicy Fields: selling idea about cannabis growing = it looks like a Ponzi for the dumbest investors who aim for the highest yield
2. Iban Wallet: the most creative P2P scam – sold idea about safe investing and low (2-5%) returns, now rebranded to Neofinders and Neowintech
3. Viventor: from a P2P marketplace it has turned into a debt recovery company that does not want to recover anything because same persons own platform and largest lender.
4. TFG Crowd – another shady business loan platform, reminds of Envestio and Kuetzal. Lately removing info from website, maybe preparing for an exit scam.
5. Fast Invest – still having liquidity problems, 6+ months to withdraw funds. €62.5 million at risk, if you can trust their info about portfolio size.
6. Bondora: doing so bad that they are refusing to publish auditor’s report.

Key takeaways

1. Some investors might think that 2020 was problematic for P2P, but 2021 will be way worse.
2. Regulators are too slow and let some P2P scams grow way too big.
3. Diversification still does not work in P2P.

Author: Kristaps Mors, kristapsmors.com