I love to diversify my Peer-to-Peer lending investments on as many great platforms as possible. In this article, I will review the Peer-to-Peer lending platform Income Marketplace, which I added to my portfolio in 2021.

In the article, I will tell you what I think are the biggest strengths (and weaknesses) of the platform, how to start using it, and what you can expect from investing on the platform. Let's start!

What is Income Marketplace?

As for all Peer-to-Peer lending platforms, Income Marketplace is a financial platform that matches borrowers with investors, that will lend money on the platform in exchange of interests on loans. Income Marketplace is really recent platform, as it was launched in early 2021. They are based in Estonia, with offices in Vienna. 

The interesting thing is that they actually reached out to me way before launching, to ask me questions about what I would like to see in a new Peer-to-Peer lending platform based on my experience. I really liked this approach, and I can say it's the first time that it happened like this so I am definitely looking forward to see how they evolve in the future. During our calls I insisted on transparency towards investors, especially on the loan originators side, as well as on security of investors funds.

What returns can I expect from investing on Income Marketplace?

The returns you can expect on Income Marketplace are close to what you can expect in the field, and currently advertised at 12% per year. From their statistics page, we can currently see that their returns are 11.83% on average, which is close to this number.

Is it safe to invest on Income Marketplace?

The question of the safety of the investors funds is central when investing on a Peer-to-Peer lending platform, as they will be managing all the money that you deposit on the platform and invest it in loans. When checking a new platform, I look at three things: what the platforms offers in terms of guarantees, the company itself (and their team), and finally the loan originators.

Risks & guarantees on Income Marketplace

On Income Marketplace, all loans come with a 60 days buyback guarantee, so this is already a good point. 

They also have a cashflow buffer on top of the buyback guarantee, meaning they have cash (a collateral coming from the loan originators) to cover the money due to investors in case a loan originator would not be paying back or would go in default.

The company & the team

As I mentioned earlier, the company just launched in 2021, but I really like the fact that they reached out to me before launching to see what I would like to see in a good P2P lending platform, and from what I saw through this review they definitely took my feedback into account :) For example, they have a lot of detailed metrics on their statistics place, including how much is currently owed by loan originators to the investors, which is quite rare to see for a platform.

They also are completely transparent about their team on their website, with a complete description of the role of each person in the team, which is also something I appreciate seeing on a platform.

Loan originators

I also always have a close look at loan originators that a platform uses, as this is usually where a platform will fall short if anything bad happens like a financial crisis. 

Here, I really liked the transparency on who their loan originators are, which you can find on a dedicated page directly accessible from the main page of the website.

They currently have loan originators from Brazil, Indonesia, and Finland, with more coming soon. I liked the fact that they give details about each of their loan originators, especially about the security of the investors funds.

Getting started with Income Marketplace

It is actually really easy to get started with Income Marketplace and have your money start generating interests on the platform.

The first step is to open an account and get verified. This was done really quickly, and including the ID verification part it was all done in under 5 minutes.

Next, you will have to deposit funds in your account to start investing in loans and generate interests. This is also really to do with Income Marketplace, as you can do it via a simple bank transfer.

Finally, you will need to choose a strategy to invest on the platform. Note that you can actually invest manually in loans on the platform, but this is not something I recommend, and you better use the auto-invest strategy that is available on Income Marketplace.

It is really easy to build a strategy with Income Marketplace, and as usual I selected only short-term loans (less than 6 months) with 10 Euros maximum investment in each loan, which is a strategy I use on most platforms. With those settings, there were still over a thousand loans available on the platform.

Once you selected and activated a strategy, you are basically done: Income Marketplace will automatically invest the funds for you, and your portfolio will start generating interests.

As for all the platforms I review, I also tried to withdraw money, and the money was back on my account in just 2 days.

Should you invest on Income Marketplace?

I spend a lot of time choosing high-quality platforms to invest on, and Income Marketplace definitely meets all my criteria in terms of returns, safety, and general usability of the platform. I also really liked the fact that they reached out to me before launching to ask my advice about what I am looking for in a good P2P lending platform, and I am really happy to see that they definitely delivered in terms of transparency & security.

Overall, Income Marketplace is definitely on the way to become a solid player in the Peer-to-Peer lending space and a platform worth trying for any investment portfolio.