Viainvest Review 2024: a Safe Platform with Great Returns

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.

What is Viainvest?

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.

What returns can I expect on Viainvest?

As I mentioned earlier, most loans on the platform have returns around 11 - 12%, and the platform currently advertises an average return for investors which is also in this range.

Is it safe to invest on Viainvest?

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 Viainvest

On Viainvest, most loans come with a buyback guarantee, which is a standard now on most Peer-to-Peer lending platforms, but it is already a good point here for Viainvest.

Note that business loans available on the platform however don't come with a buyback guarantee, so make sure to avoid those if you want to have completely safe investments on Viainvest.

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.

The good thing here is that Viainvest currently applied for an investment broker license, meaning they will have to adhere to very strict rules to ensure the investors funds are protected, which is a very good point here.

I also checked who is on their team, and it was very easy to do as they are very transparent about it on their website. 

Their CEO for example, Eduards Lapkovskis, has been also the CEO of the VIA SMS group since 2010, which is a very large company across Europe specialised in financial services.

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. 

Viainvest is working with several loan originators, most of them being in the same group as Viainvest itself, which is a model that other Peer-to-Peer lending platforms are using. This ensure they have a much better control over their loan originators as they are part of the same entity.

They currently have over 7 loan originators, in countries like Latvia, Spain, Sweden, Poland, and Romania.

How to start invest on Viainvest

Opening an account is pretty straightforward, as it was 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.

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.

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.

I went for a custom strategy, and it took me less than 5 minutes to set that up, and then your investments will be completely automated on the platform.

My Results with Viainvest

Let's now see what are my returns so far on the Viainvest platform. As for all platforms I review, I also exported the raw data from Viainvest into TrackInvest to see if it matches with the results given by the platform.

TrackInvest gives me an actual yield around 11.83%, which is really close to the expected yield of the platform. After more than 2 years now of investing on the platform, 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.