In this article, I will review the Peer-to-Peer lending platform Viainvest. I first noticed this platform via reading reports about the loan volumes of the Peer-to-Peer lending platforms in Europe, and I noticed this platform that was growing really fast month after month. Therefore, I decided to try it for myself. As for all my reviews, I tested the platform with my own money, and I'll show you how to open an account, invest, and also share with you my returns on the platform. At the end of the review, I'll also tell you if it's a good idea to invest on the platform or not.
The Viainvest Platform
Viainvest is a typical Peer-to-Peer lending platform based in Latvia, mainly focused on short-term loans and credit lines for consumers. It currently proposes loans in Spain, Latvia, Czech Republic, and Poland. The yields on the loans are up to 12%, with an average of around 11% from what I am seeing on the platform. They also have a buyback guarantee on all the loans, which is pretty neat.
Also, note that all the loans proposed on the platform are already pre-funded, meaning that you will never have money 'sitting' in a loan and then returned to you because not enough investors wanted to fund this particular loan, so that's pretty neat as well.
Opening the Account
Opening an account is pretty straightforward, as it's done in less than 5 minutes. I also transferred money on the platform via a typical bank transfer, and it took less than a day to receive the money.
Note that compared to other platforms, they actually handle taxes right inside the platform, by applying withholding taxes directly from the interests gained on the platform. You can ask them to remove those taxes by submitting a tax statement from your current country of residence. I didn't bother doing that for now as I'll have to pay those taxes anyway, and that those taxes are in the same range as my interests income tax (around 19/20%). However, if you live in a low-tax country I imagine it makes sense to send the documentation.
I also tried to withdraw money from the account to see if that works without friction, which I now do on all platforms I review. Here, you just need to send your Passport/ID card for them to verify before any withdrawal. After this was approved, I had no problem to withdraw money and received it on my account in 2 days.
Investing in Loans
The next step is to actually invest in some loans. You can do that from the investments menu, where you will find the list of all available loans on the platform:
As you can, most of the loans yield in the 10 - 12% range and are either credit lines or short-term loans. As you can also see on the right, all loans on the platform are covered by a buyback guarantee.
When you click on a loan, you can also get more details about it:
You can notice here that as all the loans of the platform, this one is already pre-funded.
Auto-Invest Function
Of course, the goal is not to invest in loans one by one, but to use the auto-invest function in order to completely automate your investments on the platform. The auto-invest function on Viainvest is really easy to setup. This is the current settings of my auto-invest function:
As you can see, there are no that many parameters to set to active the automated investing. I basically simply selected all types of loans, with at least 10% interest, and I chose to invest in all available countries. As there is a buyback guarantee on all loans, and as there are only short-term loans on the platform, I didn't have to set other parameters. It took me less than 5 minutes to set that up, and then your investments will be completely automated on the platform.
Interests Received on Viainvest
Let's now see what were my early returns on the Viainvest platform. I let about two months pass since I first deposited money in order to be able to show you what I received from my investments.
I can say that so far, I am really satisfied with the platform. I have a few loans that are delayed at the moment (mostly short-term loans from Spain), but even if they default I know I'll get my money back via the buyback guarantee. As you can see from the main dashboard, the estimated yield when I did the review was of 11.21%:
Update March 2019: It's now been over six months that I invested on the platform, and here is the overview of my portfolio on the platform at the 6 months mark:
As you can see, I injected more funds on the platform, and I received a total of 44.60 Euros of interests, for an estimated yield of 11.51%, which makes sense as I mainly invested in loans with yields in the 11% range. Some of the loans I invested in actually went to default (around 10% of them), but they all immediately got covered by the buyback guarantee of the platform, and therefore I didn't lose any money. Also, thanks to the auto invest function of the platform, this money was immediately reinvested in new loans. At this 6 months mark, I can definitely say I am still very satisfied with Viainvest.
I will of course update this article when I receive more results in the future.
Should You Invest?
I can say that I am really satisfied with Viainvest so far. It's a typical yet great Peer-to-Peer lending platform. I really like the fact that all loans come with a buyback guarantee and that the platform focuses on short-term loans, which are the two main things I like to see on a platform. Therefore, I really recommend investing on the Viainvest platform. Of course, I recommend investing along with other Peer-to-Peer platforms, in order to diversify your portfolio.
