Maclear Review: a Safe P2P Lending Platform with High Returns

I love to diversify my investments on as many great platforms as possible. In this article, I will review the crowdlending platform Maclear, which I first heard about in 2023. They actually offer a wide range of investment opportunities, while promising safe investments & high returns, and it's also the first Swiss company that I considered adding to my portfolio. For all those reasons, I really wanted to learn more about the company.

As in all my reviews, I'll start by talking about the platform itself and what returns you can expect from it. Then, we'll dive into the safety aspects of the platform. Finally, we'll see how to get started with Maclear and start investing on the platform. Let's dive in!

What is Maclear?

As for all crowdlending platforms, Maclear is a financial platform that allows investors to invest in projects, in exchange of payments of interests over time. Maclear is based in Wallisellen, Switzerland, and was officially founded in 2010 but started to offer investments in 2023.

They promise to offer high returns, while offering all the safety for investors by being a Swiss company and complying with all the required regulations to protect the investors money, which is of course something I'll verify in this review.

They are a therefore a relatively new platform, however they are for example members of PolyReg SRO, which means they respect all the required processes for AML checks of their clients.

What returns can I expect from investing on Maclear?

Whereas the actual revenue you can expect on the platform completely depends on which projects you invest in, they claim that the usual returns are up to 14% annually.

I checked the projects they already had on the platform when writing this review, and I could see yields at 13.5 - 13.8%, which is lower than what they advertise but definitely in the upper bracket of yields for similar platforms, so that's definitely some good news here.

Is it safe to invest on Maclear?

The question of the safety of the investors funds is central when investing on a crowdlending platform, as they will be managing all the money that you deposit on the platform and invest it in the projects that you select. When reviewing a new platform before adding it to my portfolio, I look at three things: what the platform offers in terms of guarantees, the company itself (and their team), and finally how the projects listed on the platform are picked.

Risks & guarantees on Maclear

I first checked that the company is actually a real company registered in Switzerland, and it is indeed.

They are also fully regulated under Swiss law, and as I mentioned before they are a member of PolyReg SRO, and therefore comply with all the AML and GDPR requirement for a company in this field.

They also have a strict KYC process that we'll cover more in details when we will talk about how to open an account & start investing on the platform. It's worth to note here that they also partnered with a well-known identify verification company for this step.

Regulation aside, the main feature that they provide to guarantee the safety of the investors money is probably the provision fund. This is basically a reserve of money that is here to cover the payment of interests to investors, in case there would be some issue with some project on the platform.

This reserve of money is funded by them transferring 2% of each funded project on the platform directly to the fund. This fund is a great idea and something I already saw on similar platforms, so it's definitely something I like to see on Maclear.

Finally, they don't have yet the European crowdfunding license, but they are applying for it and according to the CEO of the company that I talked to, they should get it in early 2024 latest.

The company & the team

As I mentioned earlier, Maclear is a company registered in Switzerland, and I could check in the official company registry of the country that it is indeed a real company that is currently active.

I also always like to check the team of the companies I invest with, especially their founders & current CEO. On Maclear, it was really easy to find information about who is working in the company, which is something I really appreciate on a platform.

I for example checked the profile of one co-founder of the company, Aleksandr Nikitin. He definitely has a strong experience in the field, having been the head of business development at a company for over 5 years.

At Maclear, he plays a critical role in project selection, leveraging his expertise in foreign trade and industrial projects.

I also checked the profile of their other co-founder, Denis Ustjev:

He also has a strong experience in the financial sector, having worked as an investment planner & financial advisor for several years. He also brings valuable expertise from his extensive background in business consulting, capital investment, business loans management, and senior management roles in multinational companies. Finally, he also diverse experience across Estonia, Azerbaijan, and the United States, which I believe equipped him with practical financial knowledge in various cultural and geographical contexts.

Both Denis and Aleksandr also have a lot personal connections and networks, especially in Estonia, which really helps to evaluate projects for potential inclusion on the platform.

Finally, I also checked the profile of Igor Bannikov, the Chief AML/Compliance/Risk Officer, who oversees and approves potential borrowing projects, and Alexej Martin, the third director, that adds relevant banking experience as a relationship manager at MBaer Bank, CH, serving as a secondary AML/Compliance Officer.

Therefore, it's safe to say that the company is definitely ran by people with a strong experience in the field.

Projects on Maclear

When I invest on a platform, I always have a very close look at where the projects that people can invest in are coming from, as most of the risks will come from here. 

In the case of Maclear, there are various projects on the platform, and at the time of writing this article, there were two business loans available on the platform.

They use a very strict due diligence process to select all the projects that will be available to investors, analysing all the financial details of the companies that apply, as well as the project itself, in terms of compliance, due diligence, and risk assessment.

On top of that, there is also always a collateral attached to each project of the platform.

Therefore, all those points combined, along with the provision fund & regulations that I mentioned earlier, makes it much safer to invest on Maclear than on other similar crowdlending platforms.

Getting started with Maclear

Let's now see how to get started with Maclear and start investing on the platform.

The first step is to open an account and get verified:

This was done relatively quickly, and it was all done within 5 minutes including the KYC part. It was really fast thanks to their partner for the identity verification, which makes the whole process really easy and completely automated.

Next, you will have to deposit funds in your account to start investing in projects on Maclear. This is also really easy, as you can do it with a simple bank transfer. Note that they don't charge any fees to deposit money on the platform.

Once this is done, you will be able to start investing on the platform. That's really easy to do on Maclear, as you can browse available projects from the main Primary Market tab:

When I started to invest on Maclear, there was only two projects available for funding, so we'll use the first one as an example:

To learn more about a project, you can simply click on it, and you will see all the information about the project. For example, this project is about financing equipment for a wooden houses manufacturing company based in Estonia. All the information about the company & the loan are listed on this page:

From this page, you can then see much more details about the project, like the main financial details (including the collateral and yield), and also pictures of the project.

Finally, once you are ready to invest, you can simply click on the Invest Now button, and your investment will be validated. Note that the minimum of investment is at 50 Euros per project, which is in the same range as other similar platforms in the field.

They also have a loyalty bonus program where, you will get additional yields on your investments depending on how much money you invest. It goes from 0.5% additional yield from 5,000 Euros invested, and up to 2% additional yield after 75,000 Euros invested.

Note that for now there are no autoinvest function or secondary market, but this is in the roadmap of the platform as indicated on their site.

They also plan to release a mobile application, which will be really convenient to manage your investments on the go.

They also have a live chat as well as a detailed FAQ section that you can use in case you need additional help to invest on the platform.

My Own Returns with Maclear

Having discovered the platform only in 2023 it's of course way too soon to speak about my own returns with the platform. However, I will definitely invest in more projects as they become available, and I will of course update this article accordingly.

To sum up, I can definitely say I like this crowdlending platform. It's the first Swiss platform that I ever added to my portfolio, and what I really liked with Maclear is the fact that they focus on the safety of the investors funds, with their strong regulation, their provision fund, the collateral in each project, and also their strict due diligence process for projects. 

The platform also provides high returns, has a team of professionals behind it, and is also really easy to use. I would have liked to see maybe more features and more diversity of projects - but it is a relatively new platform and I am sure this will evolve soon. Definitely a great platform to consider if you want to diversify your investments and add a solid Swiss platform to your portfolio.