Lendermarket now offers loans from multiple lenders
When Lendermarket launched it only offered loans from one loan originator – the Creditstar group. Recently, the site added more lenders to the platform. They have added three new loan originators so far – Crediface, Credory, and Quickcheck. In this post, we look at each of the lenders appearing on the Lendermarket site, and provide our rating scores out of 100 using the same methodology as our Mintos scoring system. As for our Mintos ratings, we intend to update this page regularly. So please continue to check back when Lendermarket adds more lenders and when any new financial statements become available for each loan originator.
Lendermarket lenders - key financial information
| Lendermarket Lender | Reporting period | Loans | Equity | P&L - latest | P&L - prior year | P&L - 2 years ago | Audited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creditstar | Mar 2023 | 217 | 50.7 | 7.5 | 8.9 | 7.1 | ✔ |
| Crediface | Dec 2021 | 0.6 | 0.0 | 0.0 | -0.1 | ✔ | |
| Credory | Jun 2022 | 3.5 | 0.2 | 0 | 0 | X | |
| Quickcheck | Aug 2022 | 3.7 | 3.3 | 0.1 | 0.4 | 0.0 | X |
Lendermarket lenders - our rating scores
| Lendermarket Lender | Profit | Capital | Size | Disclosure quality | Track record | Our score | Last score change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creditstar | 12 | 6 | 17 | 11 | 8 | 54 | 0 |
| Crediface | 0 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 21 | |
| Credory | 9 | 7 | 8 | 12 | 8 | 44 | |
| Quickcheck | 11 | 12 | 10 | 13 | 12 | 58 |
How safe is each loan originator?
Creditstar is a European lending group. It operates in 8 countries and focuses on providing various unsecured credit products to people. We have been providing rating scores for Creditstar for over 5 years, as it was active on the Mintos platform before it launched Lendermarket. At one point it was one of the highest rated loan originators. It achieved this rating because of its strong record of profitability. It has reported high levels of profit in each of the last 6 years. However our scores have been falling over the last few years. Why? First, we have lost some confidence in its finance team, which seems to us to have been too aggressive in some of its accounting policies. The company was also late to appoint a credible firm as auditor. There have been delays in publishing audited financials. However the most important reason is that Creditstar seems to have growing liquidity issues, which has led to delays in it repaying investors on the Mintos platform. It has also been significantly increasing the rates that it pays to investors on the Lendermarket platform, which is usually a sign of funding stress. The company says that it has plans to raise additional equity capital during 2023, and issue more bonds, which should address the liquidity issues. If you take the view that Creditstar is a fundamentally sound business, and the liquidity issues will be resolved, it is possible to earn high yields (above 15% currently). However that extra return definitely comes with some risk attached to it.
CrediFace is a very small lending company that operates in Peru. It provides online loans to the 'underbanked population'. This generally means customers that are either higher risk or do not have strong credit ratings. Although CrediFace has been operating since 2016, it has only been able to grow its loan portfolio to €1m as of June 2022. This is well below the level needed for most lending companies to be viable. The company has close to zero in shareholders equity. For profitability, it has broken even in the last two years that it has been operating. The management presentation provided by the company is low in quality and does not provide a good impression of the business. Our initial score for CrediFace is only 21/100, indicating that it is a high risk lending group.
Credory is an interesting new Estonian lending company. It lends only to businesses, and every loan is secured on real estate. The loan purpose can be for small developments, bridging, or for company expansion purposes. The loan to value ratio is an average of 65% with a maximum of 75%. The company launched in Q4 2020 and has grown its loan portfolio to €3.5m so far. So far no Credory borrowers have defaulted, which is great, but it is still early days... The loans offered by Credory on Lendermarket all come with a buyback guarantee, and have rates in the region of 9-10%. Using our scoring matrix, Credory achieves a score of 44/100. The main reason it loses marks is for its short track record and the small size of its balance sheet currently. However given that the company is new, has already reached break even, and its loans are all secured, the risk of Credory loans is a little lower than a score of 44 suggests.
QuickCheck is a Nigerian lender that specialises in loans to people and to small businesses. The loans are unsecured and have a typical duration of only 30 days. There appears to be a solid management team at the company, with the senior team having experience at companies such as IBM, McKinsey and CERN. The management presentations provided are very professional and have some useful content. However they don't explain why the business reduced lending volume in the last year, which led to the business making losses in the most recent period reported (1H 2022). It suggests that they potentially had some problems with either loan performance or liquidity issues. However on a positive note, the company successfully raised a $4.9m equity round in August of 2022, which was expected to allow the company to continue to grow strongly again. Our score for QuickCheck is 53/100.
Join Lendermarket and earn a 1% bonus
For a limited period of time, Lendermarket is offering a bonus of 1% to investors who open an account using the ExploreP2P link. Simply visit Lendermarket using our link and open and fund your investor account. You will receive the bonus based on the net amount deposited and invested within the first 60 days of opening an account. The bonus will be paid into your investor account within 5 business days of the bonus period ending.
Is there any positive progress with Creditstar? It seems to me, that the situation is a bit calmer there right now.
Best, Petr
Are there any news about legal action against ledermarket regarding pending payments?
things are going down for us ! They have arrested our capital and keep giving us lies and standard stories
they keep asking money and to reinvest pendings from inexistant money . Creditstar finances themselves from Lendermarket.Why ?! Nothin good will be coming for us ..
I have decided to contact some lawyer to claim for my more than one year delayed money from Credistar Poland. I think Lendermarket would say they are not responsible so I must go against Credistar. Anyone knows some international lawyers can start contacting them to start asking for the buyback obligation on a more formal way before to set a suit?
Hello, I am also interested in a lawsuit against Creditstar if they still dont release the pending payments. So far my money is stuck since september. If you started something can you send me a message, my email [email protected]
I am more worried than you , BP. Will someone answer us ,ever ?!
I received 3 of my withdrawals, all of them 14 days after requests, so they are paying out just not in 3 business days as advertised. It was somewhat promissed (via email) that the sitution should be back to normal by the end of april, however this seems not to be true yet. I guess they trully have liquidity issues, probably paying out withdrawals with these new cashback incentives.
I still have one last pending withdrawal, 14 days will be up due monday, then I’ll wait a bit see if things will settle down or not.
For weeks, I’m receiving joyful emails from Lendermarket about webinars, financial reports and even their 4th anniversary, but not the money I withdrew.
How long are you wating for withdrawals?
I managed to withdraw all, each withdrawal took 14 days to process.
I am considering putting some back for this 4 year aniversary, but would like to know the current state of loan delays… anyone?
It finally arrived after 22 days. Creditstar remains a sound business, but they should rethink the priority order of their cashflows. Paying back investors (even unregulated, even individuals) should be top priority.
Whats up with Lendermarket lately… now they sent out email that withdrawals are subject to longer delays than usual… My guess is that majority of overly delayed loans reached their maximum of 6 extensions, should we be worried?
And they started yet-another cashback campaign for whoever re-invests their funds. They’re really running out of liquidity.
The earliest withdrawall request that was qued in my case was processed yesterday… so it took 2 weeks instead of 3 days.
Great you added Lendermarket LOs to your roster of ratings. Keep up the good work!
It’s a surprise that Quickcheck has such a good rating. Although I had never problems with them (was invested there on Bondster), I am a bit worried about a possible recovery in case of problems due to their home country (Nigeria), but also because of the ability & experience of Lendermarket regarding Recovery.
I will probably just stick to Creditstar loans on Lendermarket. If they fail, it’s game over anyway 🙂