As an investor, I try diversify my crowdlending investments across as many great platforms as possible, to reduce the risk of losing money.

In this article, I will review Tribe Funding, a platform that I added to my portfolio in 2022. Tribe Funding is a particularly unique investment platform because it does not originate projects. Instead, investment opportunities are brought / aggregated to the Tribe Marketplace by a large network of alternative investment intermediaries from around the world.

I found this to be really interesting, as it sometimes is quite difficult build a diversified investment portfolio in the alternative investment’s space, as you need to create accounts on many different platform, and then manage all of them over time. 

Tribe Funding offers to solve this issue by creating Europe’s largest alternative investments marketplace that aims to  make it easy to build a diversified and protected investment portfolio in private markets - which is of course something we'll going to cover in details in this article.

What is Tribe Funding?

Launched in 2020, Tribe Funding is platform that allows people to invest in private assets such as real estate and private debt with as little as €100.

What makes Tribe Funding unique is that it acts as an aggregator, or a marketplace. Investment opportunities are brought to the platform by other alternative investment originators. This allows investors to instantly get a wide geographical diversification, and overall, an increased level of security on their portfolio. 

We'll discuss more about that when reviewing the projects originators later in the article, but they are working with some well-known originators such as LANDE and Raizers. With Tribe Funding, you can therefore build a diversified portfolio really quickly without having to create accounts on several platforms. At the time this article was written, Tribe Funding had projects aggregated from over 15 originators, in over 10+ different countries.

What returns can I expect from investing on Tribe Funding?

The returns you can expect on Tribe Funding clearly depends on which projects you are investing in, but they advertise an average return of 9.2% p.a. on their site, which is in line of what you can get in the field on most similar platforms. Projects that are listed on the platform have yields between 6 and 15%, and investment duration starting from 30 days. So you can definitely achieve what they promise by investing in the right projects.

I also wanted to mention here that you can invest in all projects starting with 100 Euros, regardless of the minimum that is fixed by each platform. This means that Tribe Funding also allows you to invest in some platforms on which you wouldn't invest because of the high entry ticket (sometimes over 1000 Euros on some platforms listed on Tribe Funding), which will allow you to have a much more diversified portfolio at the end.

Is it safe to invest on Tribe Funding?

The question of the safety of the investors funds is central when investing on any platform, as it will be managing all the money that you deposit on the platform and invest it in the projects that you chose. 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 who they are working with for the projects, which here are the platforms they are listing on their site.

Risks & guarantees on Tribe Funding

Since Tribe Funding acts as an aggregator, most of the risks are passed on to the originators. So, the most important thing is to make sure that Tribe conducts very thorough due diligence to ensure the safety of the investments of their clients. 

1. Tribe only cooperates with originators that have passed its “Pre-partnership due diligence and audit”. It is a is a procedure during which Tribe conducts an evaluation of each originator before their projects will be published on the Tribe Marketplace. This procedure was designed to achieve risk reduction for Tribe’s clients, takes 3-5 weeks to complete. You can learn more about this at: https://blog.tribefunding.eu/pre-partnership-due-diligence-and-audit/
2. On top of that, To reduce the risks even further, Tribe has implemented a “Two-level project due-diligence and risk audit” which means that all projects before being released on the Tribe Marketplace are subject to risk analysis not just once but two times. First, by the partner (originator), and second, by Tribe’s due diligence and risk audit team. From my review, it appeared that Tribe’s risk tolerance is more conservative, as a result, only the highest-quality investments are released to the Tribe Marketplace. You can learn more about this at: https://blog.tribefunding.eu/two-level-project-due-diligence-and-risk-audit/
3. Then, they also have skin in the game, meaning that they invest their own money into the projects present on the platform. This for sure also motivates them to only choose the best platforms & projects they offer on the platform.
4. Also, over 90% of the projects available on the platform come with a collateral - meaning some asset that can be taken if the project goes to default. That significantly reduces the risk taken by investors, as it will be much easier to cover their money in case of a default on the platform. Of course, different projects on the platform can have different types of collaterals, for example a piece of real estate, insurance, or a pledge of assets from the owner/developer of the project. You can learn more about collaterals at: https://blog.tribefunding.eu/collateral-types-for-projects-on-the-tribe-marketplace/

They also implemented a risk score that they use to rate the projects they put on their platform in order to help investors.

The company & the team

As I mentioned earlier, the company launched in 2020 which makes it still a young platform, but I like the fact that they have skin in the game in every project, which means they actually care and are in with the investors on the projects that they list on the 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. 

As usual I checked the founders of the company, and they definitely have experience in the field. Their CEO for example, Igor Demchakov, has an excellent background in business in Latvia, as he is a founding member of Booking Group, which is one of the largest travel broker in the world, with over a million customers over the world and offering services in over 150 countries and 20,000 locations around the world.

Their other co-founder, Alexandrs Pirh, previously worked as the business development manager for one of the largest lending company in Russia, which had over 1 Million customers and over 160 Million loans originated by this platform. He was in charge of launching a P2P lending marketplace for them, which definitely makes him qualified to work at a company such as Tribe Funding.

As another example, the person responsible for the financial control & audit at Tribe Funding, Anatolijs Saksaganskis, has experience working at companies like Deloitte and KPMG.

Therefore, it is clear that the company is definitely in very good hands with people with such high level of expertise and experience.

Projects originators

I usually look at which real estate development companies or real estate management agencies the platform is using, but in the case of Tribe Funding it is of course completely different as they are listing projects from other platforms. Therefore, I had a look at those platforms instead.

As I mentioned before, Tribe Funding works with over 15 originators that are all listed and described on their website, including: 

• Lande 
• Raizers 
• Rendity 
• Urbanitae 
• Debitum 
• Network
•  NEO Finance 
• Stockcrowd IN 
• Klear 
• Housers 
• Colectual 
• Heavy Finance 
• SegoFactoring (ex.Emprestamo) 
• Bettervest 
• Maxcrowdfund 
• Raizers 
• GoParity 
• Roier 

This variety of originators allows investors to diversify across many assets within a single account: 

• 10+ countries 
• 9 different business sectors 
• 8 investment types
• Annual interest up to 15% 
• Term starting with 30 days

They currently work with projects originators from all over Europe, with countries like Spain, France or Estonia. It also made me discover platforms that I never even considered before. This variety of originators really allows investors to diversify  across many assets  within a single account: 14+ countries, 9 different business sectors, 8 different investment types all within one platform. Therefore, it's really easy to get a diversified and less risky portfolio by using Tribe Funding. You can learn more about diversification on their platform at: https://blog.tribefunding.eu/diversification-on-the-tribe-marketplace/

It's worth noting here that they use a strict process to select which originators they are working with, which reinforces the security of the platform for investors. For each of them, they use an auditing process that lasts 3 to 5 weeks, and that consists in doing legal & anti money laundering checks, checking the internal processes of the originator, and also reviewing their financial situation & financial performance. This strict auditing and due diligence ensure that only the best platforms & projects will be available to investors on Tribe Funding.

Getting started with Tribe Funding

It is actually really easy to get started with Tribe Funding 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 projects and generate interests. This is also really to do with Tribe Funding as you can do it via a simple bank transfer.

Then, you can start investing. To do so, you can look at the primary market to see what projects are available on the platform:

Note here there are three different types of projects you can invest in using Tribe Funding: including real estate,  business loans, personal loans, and more. By opening a project, you can get a lot of details about each project including different documents:

You can also see a detailed description of each project:

Then, when you find a project you can invest in it from the page. Note that the minimum investment on the site is currently of 100 Euros per project.

Note that a secondary market should be available soon, so you can also sell your shares in existing projects, or find projects that already started and invest with sometimes a discount.

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.

My results with Tribe Funding

As I mentioned before, I have been investing on Tribe Funding since 2022, and so far I only had a good experience with Tribe Funding. I mostly use it to invest on platforms that otherwise would be difficult to invest in, like Raizers in France or some platforms that I don't have yet in my portfolio.