Grupeer Review

Grupeer may be a scam! Investors could lose capital as loans may not be real, and many were unsecured – Grupeer P2P Review. Is Grupeer Safe? Find Out!

My Lending Experiences & most recent updates below.

What is Grupeer?

Grupeer is a leading European Peer to Peer Lender, providing loans to consumers & businesses around Europe. 

Offering easy, hands-off returns between 10% and 14%, Grupeer P2P is an excellent option for diversification when investing in Euro currency loans. Grupeer also offer a “buyback guarantee” on most of their loans, which means it will buyback loans and repay principal and interest if payments are delayed more than 60 days.

Grupeer is very similar to Mintos & RoboCash where it does not originate most loans itself, but uses loan originators (Grupeer calls them “Deal Partners”) to provide most of the loans. This means that Grupeer’s loan flow is generally good, keeping cash drag to a minimum. 

The Obvious Investor – Easy-Info Table^© – Grupeer Review

Overall Rating*:	(3.8 / 5)
Who can invest:
Loan Currencies:	€
Estimated Return:	Up to 14%
My Annual Return (Per Lender):	13.00%
My Calculated XIRR:	13.85%
Risk Rating*:	5/10 - Medium
Early Exit:	No No secondary market.
Min. Investment:	€10
Deposit Funds:	Bank account (SEPA Transfer). Typically 1 -3 days.
Auto-Invest:	Yes
Manual Invest:	Yes
Lending To:	Borrowers (through originators)
Loan Types:	Mortgages, Car Loans, Business Loans, Personal Loans, Development Loans.
Loan Security:	Yes, with some loans.
Provision Fund:	No provision fund. See review for "Buy Back Guarantee" and "Skin in the Game".
Loans Amortize:	Some fully amortize. Some partial. Some bullet.
Time to Invest:	Fast: large loan book.
Time to Mange:	None (auto-invest) to medium (manual invest)
Lender Fees:	No.
Payments Received:	Monthly, weekly. Various times.
Amount Lent:	€60 million+
Number of Investors:	16,000+
Loan/Dflt Stats:	Not Published.
Regulated:	No
Location:	Rep of Ireland.
Launched:	2016
Website:	https://www.grupeer.com
Email:	support@grupeer.com
Telephone:	+353 1 960 1199
IFISA/IRA:	No
Cashback**:	No
How to Sign Up**:	Not available currently.

Grupeer – Overview

History

Grupeer was launched in 2016 in Riga, Latvia. They recently (September 2019) moved to the jurisdiction of The Republic of Ireland which is now their official place of business.

In the 3 or so years Grupeer P2P has been in business, it has lent out over 60€ million Euros from over 16,000 registered investors from 80+ countries. Those figures are very good for a Euro lender with only around 3 years history.

Deposits & Withdrawals

Deposits and withdrawals are made by bank transfer (SEPA transfer so IBAN number required). 

You will be provided with the relevant bank details when you go to the deposits screen.

Deposits usually show up in your account the next working day depending on what time you send it (although Grupeer say 3-4 days, this has not been my experience). 

Withdrawals are only to a verified bank account, and typically take 1 – 2 business days.

Time to Become Invested – Grupeer Review

Grupeer now has a large loan book from over 30 originators. If you use auto-invest (as I do) then once you’ve set up your investment strategy, it usually takes just minutes for your capital to get distributed in to loans. As you can see below, you set all of the variables and then Grupeer will tell you how many loans meet your criteria.

Make sure you have enough loans available to get all of your capital distributed at the “max amount per loan” setting.

If you choose to lend manually with the regular loan listings, it will take as long as it takes you to decide on which loans you want to be invested in.

Grupeer has a couple of manual lending options. You can invest individually in “Loan Deals”, which are basically the same loans which are available in auto-invest. As you can see from the screenshot below, you can filter on similar fields to the auto-invest screen to find loans you want to invest in manually.

Who are we lending to?

Grupeer P2P is a true Peer to Peer Lending Platform. Lenders are lending directly to borrowers. Loan agreements are directly between the lender and the borrower. Grupeer just acts as a middle man, managing loans, payments and debt collection etc.

Similar to Mintos & RoboCash, Grupeer itself doesn’t originate most of the loans like many P2P lenders.  It has over 30 “loan originator companies” it works with, and they originate the loans locally, then provide the loans to Grupeer for individual lenders to invest in.

Loan Types

Grupeer provides loans to consumers and businesses for many different purposes. From personal and car loans to large development projects, business loans and mortgages. Just about any type of loan you can imagine. It also provides secured and unsecured business loans.

Loan Security – Grupeer Review

Both secured and unsecured loans are available on the Grupeer platform.

It is easy to see on their website which loans have security and which don’t, as well as the LTV’s (Loan to Value Ratios).

Remember the Grupeer buyback guarantee and some of the loan originators’ “skin-in-the-game” offers further security. The green shield on the screenshot below signifies that the loan has a buyback guarantee. The orange umbrella shows that the loan has asset backed security. The LTV field obviously shows the Loan to Value ratio for that particular loan.

Default Rates – Grupeer Review

Grupeer don’t publish their default rates. As most originators offer buyback guarantees they are less important than if investing though a company like Zopa or Funding Circle that don’t offer any kind of buyback guarantee or provision fund, and therefore default rates can make a significant difference to the account yield. As I was writing this review, I emailed Grupeer to ask about defaults and received this text in reply: “At the moment the compound statistics are unavailable, however, we are working on implementing it. You can download all the information regarding all your received interest and principal payments on your Account Statement. Please kindly note that for now all loans on the platform are current and have a zero default rate as well as zero delayed payments, therefore you are receiving all the payments according to the schedule.” The last sentence is obviously quite encouraging, although it only refers to current loans on the platform.

Amortization

There are different types of loans on Grupeer; fully amortizing, partially amortizing, interest only and bullet loans (balloon payment). 

Amortization is the paying off of debt with a fixed repayment schedule in regular installments over time. It reduces the risk of the loan compared to a non-amortizing loan in which nothing is received until the end of the loan period, or only interest is received monthly, and then the capital repaid at the end of the loan period.

To find out if a loan is amortizing, you will need to open up the loan agreement by clicking on the “PDF” icon to the right of the loan listings:

Selling Loans and Withdrawing Capital

There is no secondary market yet with Grupeer so when you invest in loans, make sure you understand the loan term. Also ensure you have the correct settings in your auto-invest strategy for loan length. Grupeer loans are typically from 1 – 2 years. 

Diversification – Grupeer Review

Diversifying capital into loans is easy with Grupeer because of the size of their loan book.

Their predefined auto-invest portfolios diversify automatically based on the settings you give them, and with the self-select loans, you decide the amount you put into each loan.

Provision Fund

There is technically no provision fund with Grupeer.  However the previously mentioned “Grupeer buyback guarantee” really helps to put more confidence in Grupeer loans.

Buyback guarantees in my eyes are as good as, if not better than a single provision fund. This is because we are not relying on just one company to step in if a loan goes in to default. Each originator is responsible for it’s own guarantee which Grupeer regulates to an extent. The risk of course is if an originator goes out of business, which has happened once in the past with a Mintos originator, but not with Grupeer so far to my knowledge. 

Skin-In-The-Game

On top of that, some of the loan originators offer what Grupeer refers to as “skin in the game”. Meaning they invest their own capital in a percentage of the loan (typically from 5% – 15%) on a first loss basis. So if the loan goes bad, they lose money before the Grupeer lenders (assuming no buyback guarantee). This also helps to ensure appropriate levels of due diligence from the loan originators on borrowers and adds just another level of security.

Tax Free Innovative Finance ISA (IFISA)

No Tax Free IFISA account options with Grupeer.

Website – Grupeer Review

The Grupeer Website is simple but effective. It’s fairly easy to figure out where everything is and how to set up auto-invest strategies or manually select loans. 

Return Rates

Grupeer return rates are very good, at an average of around 13%. Their website says the average is 13.36% as I’m writing this review. Very good rates in my opinion.

Grupeer actually used to offer interest rates much higher (up to 18%) when they first started. However recently the rates have come down due to increased investor demand and the growing safety of the platform. 

• Unique Diversification  – focusing on consumers and businesses in many different countries in Euro currency.

• Great Returns – 13%+ for loans in Euros is certainly a nice rate.

• Auto-Invest – auto-invest options are nicely configurable allowing us to pick up just the loans we want in our portfolio.

• Skin in the Game – many lenders have their own interest in loans so they should take more care in loans they write.

• Grupeer Buyback Guarantee – most originators offer the “Grupeer buyback guarantee” and will buy back the loans if they go in to default, therefor making investments safer. 

• No Regulation – may make Grupeer a riskier proposition, however having a good history, asset security and multiple loan originators helps to lower the risk.

• Rep of Ireland Based – for UK investors this may not be as comfortable as investing in UK companies. European investors don’t seem to see this as an issue though, and I certainly don’t.

• Currency Risk – investing in a currency other than your home currency can have it’s own inherent risks if it falls. If your home currency is Euros then this is not an issue.

• No retirement account – for interest free investing.

Is Grupeer Safe? It looks like not. Grupeer has turned out to be a scam. Read more at the beginning of the review.

Even taking in to consideration that some loans are secured, originators have “skin in the game” and the “Grupeer buyback guarantee”, Grupeer is still an unregulated business with a short track record.

Safe?

Residents of most countries in the EU can invest with Grupeer, and also other countries that can conform to the EU’s money laundering regulations. Contact Grupeer for more information

Offers & Signup Links**

No current Grupeer cashback offers.