PeerBerry Review 2024: My Results After Over 2 Years

One of my favorite asset types is Peer-to-Peer lending, which consists of lending money to individuals via online platforms, in exchange for payment of interests over time. Peer-to-Peer lending has a high-yield, can be completely automated, and also has a low level of risk if you do it right.

In order to diversify my portfolio and reduce the level of risks of my investments, I am always looking to invest in new Peer-to-Peer lending platforms. In this article, I will review PeerBerry, a Peer-to-Peer lending platform based in Latvia. I followed the platform for a while and saw that it was getting rapid momentum during the past months before this review, so I really wanted to try it out. As usual, I will review the platform by investing my own money, and tell you what I think about the platform and share the results from my investments.

What is PeerBerry?

PeerBerry is a Peer-to-Peer lending platform based in Latvia and offers loans with returns up to 12%, which is similar to what is offered by many European Peer-to-Peer lending platforms. The platforms list loans from Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Denmark, and Ukraine. They now have over 13.000 investors and funded over 128 million Euros worth of loans.

Also, note that all loans offered on PeerBerry are in Euros, which protects you from currency swings for loans that are in countries not using Euros (like Poland or Ukraine). 

What returns can I expected on PeerBerry?

As I mentioned earlier, most loans on the platform have returns around 10 - 12%, and the platform currently advertises an average return for investors which is close to 11% per year.

Is It Safe to Invest on PeerBerry?

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 PeerBerry

All the loans listed on the platform comes with a buyback guarantee, meaning that even if a loan goes in default, you will still get your money back from the platform. So that's a great thing to have as an investor. They have a lot of short-term loans, which is something I really like as it makes sure your money is not stuck in loans for long periods of time.

You can also invest on PeerBerry for just 10 Euros in each loan, meaning it's really easy to quickly have a diversified portfolio on the platform.

The company & the team

As for all Peer-to-Peer lending platforms I add to my portfolio, I also check the company itself and see what they are doing in terms of security & safety of the investors funds.

PeerBerry is very transparent about their team, and I had no issues finding who is currently on their team and what are their roles.

For example, their CEO Arunas Lekavicius worked in another financial services companies for over 8 years before becoming the CEO of PeerBerry.

Loan originators

I also always have do a close examination of the loan originators a platform uses, as this is usually where a platform will encounter problems if anything bad happens like a financial crisis. 

PeerBerry mainly works with a partner called the Aventus Group for its loan originators, which provides loans from Poland & Ukraine on the platform. They also works with several other loan originators, providing loans in countries like the Czech Republic and Lithuania.

Overall, I really liked the fact that they are fully transparent with their loan originators, and it is really to find detailed information about each of them on the website of PeerBerry.

The combination of all those factors makes it really safe to invest on PeerBerry compared to other Peer-to-Peer lending platforms.

Opening an Account

The first step was to open an account on the platform. The process was really easy, and it was done under 5 minutes. I also transferred money on the platform, which I did via TransferWise. This was really easy as well, and the money appeared on my account in less than 2 days.

As I now do in all my reviews, I tried to withdraw money as soon as I received it on PeerBerry. This happened without any issues, and I had my money back in 2 days.

Investing in Loans

It's now time to actually invest in some loans on the platform. Here is an overview of the loans that were available on the platform when I did this review:

As you can see, it's a mix of short-term loans and real estate development projects, which are usually with a one year term.

It's also very easy to get more details about a given loan.

Of course, you will mostly get information about real estate loans, with a detailed description of each project. 

Auto-Invest Feature

Let's now see the auto-invest feature of the platform, which I really advise you to use as soon as possible on the platform as it will completely automate your investments.

On PeerBerry, it's really easy to use this feature, as there are not so many parameters to set. Here is a screenshot of the auto-invest builder:

As you can see, I activated all countries, with interest rates above 9%. I also chose all terms for now, as even real estate loans have a maximum term of one year. However, I might restrict this in the future in case they introduce loans with longer terms. Once I activated the auto-invest portfolio on PeerBerry, it quickly invested all the money I deposited in loans that matched my criteria. 

Returns on PeerBerry

Let's now see what were my returns on the platform. When I first started to invest in the platform, I immediately activated the auto-invest function, and also make deposits for a total of 1000 Euros over the first months of investing. I also made one withdrawal to check if everything was working fine to get your money back (and it does!). It's now been over a year that I invested on the platform, and I can say that so far, everything is working as expected.

My estimated annual return is at 10.91%, which makes sense as I mostly invested in loans with a yield around 11%.

I will of course update this review as I receive more results from PeerBerry.