Bondora Review: Tested for 5 years ⭕️ (quick guide) 2023

This is a complete Bondora Review for investors in P2P loans.

In this article I’ll tell you what investors say about Bondora and also my opinion as an investor.

Most Bondora reviews are good, but some old ones are not so good.

Why?

I’ve collected all information you need to decide if Bondora suite your needs or not.

When I found Bondora I felt it could have been perfect for me,

Now I have been an investor for 7 years, so I have a clear idea of what I can get from it.

After 7 years things are changing.

❌ Bondora closed my account in 2023.

I cannot say exactly why this happened, but the official reason was that I had not complied with the KYC.

They told me that even if I had complied with the KYC they were no longer interested in having me as an investor because I had stated that I did not want to invest new funds with them.

That’s all true!

They gave me back all the money, so no hard feelings but I lost confidence.

Let me review Bondora for you…

Bondora is legally licensed to operate in Estonia by the Estonian Financial Supervision Authority (FSA). The FSA is the main regulating body in Estonia.

Bondora funded 370 Million euros in loans since 2009.

This data make Bondora one of the oldest and best P2P lending operators in Europe.

⭕️ Bondora investment reviews online

Here is a summary of the most relevant sources of opinions about Bondora P2P.

I’ve scanned and analyzed a lot of reviews about Bondora P2P on multiple websites and online investing forum.

Here are the average Bondora review scoring on multiple websites:

• Trustpilot 4.7 / 5 
• Google  4.8 / 5 
• Financial Forum
• Authoritative online review websites

Bondora reviews on Trustpilot

The average Bondora review form users on Trustpilot  is good.

Users that leave Trustpilot reviews may be not expert and may leave reviews too soon sometimes, but still it can give us an idea of how good or bad a service is doing.

On Trustpilot Bondora is doing well.

79% of the users that left an opinion on Bondora said that bad an excellent experience.

17% comment that Bondora is “great”.

Let’s take it with a grain of salt and move on.

Bondora reviews Reddit

Most Redditors believe Bondora is a smart way to invest in P2P loans.

Many Bondora reviews on Reddit focus on the Go & Grow program that is serving only 4% interest now..

Bondora opinions on Google

The vast majority of reviews on Bondora left by Google users are good.

This Bondora rating seems to be quite reliable since 4833 investors wrote a review on this financial product.

Bondora reviews on investment forums

The same enthusiasm we found on Trustpilot about Bondora is not always shared on investing forums.

I went through most of this forums opinions on Bondora and I’ve found out that many of the bad Bondora reviews are very old and that are mostly written by inexperienced users.

The problem is this: Bondora was not easy to use before. It was very easy to get a very risky loan portfolio especially by using the Portfolio manager tool.

A new year ago they released a new investing tool called Bondora Go & Grow.

With that portfolio builder there was no room for mistakes but the return is capped to 4%

On most forums the opinions about Go & Grow are good even if most people complain about the lack of transparency (rightfully so).

Non here is my review on Bondora,

and my profitable experience

I will only tell what I do. I don’t recommend investments, but I can recommend you only to read reviews written by real investors.

Once decided Bondora fits my needs, I went straight to learn how to set it up in a convenient and productive way.

This is how I use Bondora in a way that won’t make me worry much about it in the future.

I haven’t paid any commission, either for depositing money nor for investing it.   Bondora signup and use are also free.

Transferring money and interests accrued into my bank account is free, too.

Here is a p2p comparison between Mintos and Bondora.

“Bondora is one of those platforms that allows me somehow to “act as a bank” by lending money to private parties in order to receive interests on their debt.

Bondora is one of the oldest peer-to-peer lending platforms in Europe.

I am an ordinary Bondora user, and here is my experience Click To Tweet

Where does Bondora keep my money?

The money I transfer is kept by SEB Bank, a Scandinavian bank with a higher rating than many European banks.

Bondora finances are separated from those of others investors, so, at least up to this point, if Bondora had to close, our money should not be directly affected.

What does Bondora do?

Bondora, like other P2Ps,  groups together and manages a large series of loans granted to citizens of some European countries (consumer loans). Then, it makes me take part in the loan in an almost virtual way, by allowing me to cash-in the interests that people pay to the financial Bondora that has granted the loans.

In doing so, it transfers to us a bit of the risk that lending involves, and of course, the interests.

Bondora also deals with recovering the debts from slow payers so that I don’t have to take care of that.

Unfortunately, the impact of slow payers isn’t always very clear in the data it publishes, but it is certain that by selecting well, with such high returns, it is difficult to be completely wrong.

The potentially late loans are mostly gathered on the “high risk” ratings, while they are obviously less frequent in the higher ratings (more reliable borrowers).

The average person who complains about #Bondora (there are a few on the web) is typically someone who looked for the maximum return in the past (see photo below) without worrying about the credit risk Click To Tweet

Instead, I have analysed the risk/return factor and I have made the following conclusions.

Before continuing, I now invite you to repay the effort and the research I have put in writing this article: just share this post! It costs you nothing, and it feels great for me! Thank you!

❌ Bondora default

If Bondora should collapse one day what will happen to my lended money?

I will answer with facts, not opinions.

Bondora offers “direct loans”.

When I invest in direct loans I mainly need to worry about the borrower, not about the middleman that is represented by Bondora in this case.

When I use the Go & Grow instead I am mainly investing in Bondora itself, since the exact composition of the portfolio is not disclosed.

As you can see there is not a better option for all. Borrowers can keep paying regularly or not and Bondora may default or not.

I am sure you want to know that Bondora is able to earn money when:

• they issue new loans
• if a loan is late
• if a loan goest into collection
• when loans are paid regularly

Bondora has a super slim structure and very low expenses, so I trust they have experience to keep doing well.

I prefer to invest in direct loans since I can spread the risk among thousand of borrowers. Even if some of them will stop paying I don’t need to worry much.

Nowadays Go & Grow only pay 4% to new investors and there are no other ways to invest with Bondora.

Video Bondora review on Youtube

Here is a recent video where the most popular answers about Bondora’s situation are answered by the CEO Partel Tomberg:

This is a good YouTube video on Bondora to understand how they make it work and why to trust them or no.

What about Mintos loans though…

I know, now you want to know the difference between Bondora and Mintos in terms of safety.

It is totally different.

Mintos doesn’t originate loans as Bondora does. Most loans on Mintos are also direct, not all.

• On Mintos I focus more on the health of the loan originators.
• On Bondora I care about the borrowers and their ratings.

Who in in charge of Bondora?

In this recent video you can see Parte Tomberg, CEO at Bondora since it’s inceppino:

Let’s see how it works!

This is how I have invested with Bondora successfully for 7 years now (before they closed my account)

By following my super-simple Bondora set-up, I have been able to reduce most of the risks without excessively compressing the returns.

This strategies are no longer available.

To sign up I’ve just used my email address, then I received an email and I filled in the rest. Also Facebook and Google sign-up are available (open this in a new browser window if you wish, but keep reading).

How I loaded my funds on Bondora

Immediately after subscription I have deposited the amount of money that I wanted to invest on Bondora.

Well, not ALL the amount straight away. I wasn’t brave enough at that time.

I’ve picked the option of depositing some cash by Visa (also Mastercard is available now).

How to transfer money and what to expect

Here is exactly what I did next to speed up my investment in loans

Supposing that a credit card has a limit and I want to invest a consistent amount to get a relevant additional income, I will consider making a SEPA bank transfer instead. And this is exactly what I did after few days of investing by credit card and after my very first test was completed.

Honestly? It wasn’t an easy step, because Bondora was rather unknown in my country.

Just to get an idea, investing at 12% yearly interest rate on Bondora the amount of 10.000 euros may generate 1200€ per year approximately.

Should I invest 50’000€ at the same rate I would be able to make approximately 6000€ yearly, which is a respectable additional flow of income in my opinion.

Once again, it is important to avoid high risk loans to achieve it safely.

15% of Bondora investors earn more then 15% or even 20% yearly (Bondora data 2019). 

I am fine to settle for a little less and I’m very happy with my conservative  settings

The SEPA transfer is a transaction that is normally free of charge in Europe.

Making a wire transfer abroad of a certain amount of money can be scary.

I hesitated a few days before depositing my money there, but finally I did it. It was some years ago. No regrets, so far.

95.000 small/large investors all around the world use Bondora now to obtain returns that don’t exist anywhere else anymore with the same amount of risk. I keep an eye open, but at the moment, I believe there’s no reason to worry.

Some smaller and exotic peer to peer lending companies are out of my radar for safety reasons.

Follow Revenue.Land and you’ll get all my updates real time.

How I started with Bondora

step-by-step process

As I said, there are 3 ways to invest.

• One is called “Portfolio Manager” and it’s the easiest and most direct way (❌ Not available anymore)

• Another way is called “Portfolio PRO” and it gives me more control (❌ Not available anymore)

• The most automatic way is the Go & Grow% 4% capped interest

Here I am going to show you my “Portfolio Manager” setup

This is to start as soon as possible and to start enjoying the paid interests.

An easier alternative is the Bondora Go & Grow setup.

To know more about the third option, the advanced “portfolio pro” read this.

Let’s now go to the “Dashboard”, the splash screen.

Pressing “start” on the left bottom I will “Activate Portfolio Manager”.

Let’s set the “starting amount” and the “years of investment” and I will automatically see an estimated “expected return” in the green window on the right. On the right, I’ll also find the expected distribution by rating and by country.

If I wish to have more control on this elements I need to move to the “portfolio pro”.

This auto-investment is enough if I don’t feel too confident at the beginning.

What to remember:

1. I prefer the “ultra-conservative” setup
2. I remember to set the Years to “1”

By clicking “Start” on the bottom right I agreed to terms and started to invest on Bondora.
Now I’ve set up the Portfolio Manager, and I can move to “investments” to see how my position evolves.

I am done.

I am investing with Bondora and it only took me few minutes!

Obviously the higher the return, the likelier the chance of absorbing loans given to less trustable people.

Why do I believe is wise to “stay” at the left of the range? Just to balance risk and profit wisely. Doing so, I am telling the platform to buy for me fractions of “not too risky loans”.

It can be very very tempting to move towards the right side of the range, towards the higher returns. But I won’t go there.

This is because down there I’ll bump into investment whose success is highly linked to the system ability to recover the credit, as they’re high-risk loans, often granted in Finland and Spain.

Some of the high risk/yield loans are paid with delay, some can even default.

The process to recover defaulted loans can be slow. On the other hand, Bondora recently declared that the ability to recover money from who is not paying on time, has greatly improved in the past few years.

Opportunistic expositions offer really high returns but it can also bring losses and can delay a lot the time I need to get back my investment.

I don’t want it.

This is why I stick to the less risky ones and I resist temptation. 

I consider that nowadays a 10y German BUND (government bond), doesn’t pay much (less then 1% gross). Very safe, but not profitable these days. That’s why I need to rebalance a tiny part of my investments in a new way, and since I can get 8-14% revenue with P2P lending, that’s going to be enough for me for a test.

🎥 Bondora video setup

In this very short video I show how to setup Bondora in a very simple way.

Another way to make a proper setup is the Portfolio Pro. The total automation is given by the Go & Grow.

The magic of compound interest

As soon as I’ve transferred the “loot” that I want to multiply, I’ve made some calculations. With a 10/15% interest, I’ll be able to double the invested amount of money in few years.

In the chart below, we see the effect of the combined interest, that is to say, how much the capital increases exponentially once I’ve started reinvesting what I’ve earned.

For example: if I invest 20.000€, after one year I will have at least 2000€ more, rather effortlessly.

If then I reinvest again (Bondora will do that for me) the initial sum plus what I have accrued, with some patience and monitoring, the result across the year will be exponential, as the chart shows.

Bondora is a long-term investment.

Swooping returns with Bondora

For a number of reasons, the returns have been slowly decreasing over the past few years. Until a few years ago, an 18% “automatic” average with Bondora was no pipe dream. Now the average is between 9% and 15% with my settings.

It is possible to predict that in the future I could have to deal with lower rates (but still really high and legal). Many of those who invested just 4 years ago say they have already doubled their sum.

With “safer” traditional investments, I’d need decades to get a similar result. Of course risk/reward ratio is different, so I allocated a part of my capital here.

“I want to own a bank”

As a child, they teach you that the house always wins… and statistics confirm this.

As an adult, the house is represented by the banks and we have learned that these, indeed, always win. Then we get angry and we curse about the charges, the untimely investments, the untranslatable accounting and, most importantly, the interests we pay on loans.

On a very common 100'000€ mortgage on a house, after 30 years the bank collects, at your expense, almost 100'000€ of interest! Click To Tweet

Have you ever wondered if YOU should maybe be the bank?

Maybe you did, but it wasn’t possible before. But now (somehow) you can!

Keep reading the Bondora review and decide if to borrow money to earn more money is a good idea or not.

Bondora mistakes 🏴

Temptation if beautiful.

The truth: Bondora extremely high interest rate on some loan classes are really tempting (>40%). (❌ Not available anymore)

Misguided investors before me didn’t resist and now complain about high-risk loans that are late.

My path:

1. I’ve studied their portfolio
2. Analyzed their complains
3. Crossed data with statistics
4. Came out with the easy strategy I’ve shown above (alternative to the easy Go & Grow system)

This is an example of a hazardous (portfolio manager) setup for me:

And this is an example of a wrong setup (portfolio pro) for me:

How NOT to use Bondora! ⬆ Setting Bondora portfolio to high risk may not bring to higher returns any soon.

This is precisely where those with no experience and lots of greed, normally fall and risk losing money, too!

Keep reading…

 These days, 30% is not a return that you can reach without exposing yourself to a high risk. I like to talk about investments here (a moderate to risky investment), not gambling or binary options.

I have learned from others’ mistakes.

This is why I felt the need of being careful and make more productive choices.

Bondora Go & Grow Automation, how to use

It is very easy to activate the Go & Grow.

The 4% capped interest starts to flow immediately after setup 

This is the Go & Grow step by step:

1. I register to Bondora website
2. I deposit funds
3. I head to Go & Grow Page
4. I am given 6 options (choose one, it makes no difference)
5. I setup the plan (3 questions in total)
6. Click on “create my go & grow account”

No additional action is required

I 

Here is a deep explanation of the Go & Grow.

Is Bondora trustable?

If I measure Bondora’s reliability through actual data (not internal statistics), I can say that it is a pretty reliable site.
The most trustworthy Bondora product is Go & Grow 4% due to the fact that it has consistently paid the promised interest since it was created.

What exactly is inside Go & Grow is not very clear, so investing through the Go & Grow system (and not choosing individual loans) is an act of trust in Bondora as a company and does not require any stylistic stance on the part of the investor.

Who can invest in Bondora?

These are the countries whose citizens can invest in Bondora:
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.

To invest with Bondora you need to be of legal age (+18).

Conclusions

Bondora can be an decent way to invest in european P2P lending loans but it now offers only the automation with 4% interests.

Always remember that capital and interests are not guaranteed.

What to do to start with Bondora now?

If I feel Bondora suits my needs:

• I sign up

• I safely transfer the sum I’m willing to invest in loans (Visa or bank transfer)

• I limit the risks by following common sense

• I activate the Go & Grow 4%

If I want to go up a level and set up a “Portfolio Pro”, I have written something interesting. (❌ Not available anymore)

This blog is purely for informational and educational uses (disclaimer). I don’t work for Bondora or any other P2P and I don’t advise anyone to use any of this tools or to make investments of any kind.