Who are the most solid lenders on Mintos? Our Mintos lender ratings

1,125 thoughts on “Who are the most solid lenders on Mintos? Our Mintos lender ratings”

1. Hugo September 3, 2019Reply

   New company, another of our “favourite” Polish LOs, this time a big fish with low interests to match. https://www.mintos.com/en/loan-originators/everest-finanse/#general

   • Oscar Harrington Post authorSeptember 3, 2019Reply

     Thanks Hugo & Christian, we’ve added Everest now. Unfortunately it seems to be another case where the management presentation glosses over some of the more difficult realities…. The financial statements (in Polish) don’t provide a very good explanation of why the business is losing so much money. One reason is the high tax expense (likely because the tax deduction for bad debts takes longer to claim than the accounting expense), but otherwise we would expect a company with a €100m loan portfolio in Poland with those interest rates should be profitable.

2. Christian September 3, 2019Reply

   Not officially announced yet, but coming soon: https://www.mintos.com/en/loan-originators/everest-finanse/#general

   Looks promising from the first numbers, but I’d be curious about your judgement!

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4. Christian August 25, 2019Reply

   Hey, I find this one on the Iute website: https://iutecredit.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/IuteCredit-Group-Results-H1-2019.pdf

   Isn’t this the one? 🙂

   • Oscar Harrington Post authorAugust 28, 2019Reply

     Yes! Didn’t seem to be there before. Thanks again Christian we have updated for those results.

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6. Christian August 22, 2019Reply

   New unaudited results for Iute for the first half of 2019:
   https://www.dgap.de/dgap/News/corporate/iutecredit-reports-unaudited-results-for-h/?newsID=1187057

   • Oscar Harrington Post authorAugust 25, 2019Reply

     Thanks as always Christian. Unfortunately they seem to have forgotten to upload the report to their website – the link they provide does not work! We’ve contacted them asking for a copy of the full results.

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10. Thomas August 16, 2019Reply

    HI there

    It’s nothing directly linked to this site, however I am wondering what you think about this. I received an E-Mail from Mintos regarding that Iutecredit will buy back most of it’s loan portfolio and within the same E-Mail Mintos suggested other Loan Originators in which I could invest. A warning message regarding that the capital is at risk was missing.

    So I have answered in a short E-Mail, that they should always place a warning message regarding that the capital is at risk when investing.

    The answer was:
    Morning Thomas,

    Thank you for your thoughts, however, I do not really get why we should add that the capital is at risk?

    Kind regards
    ——
    I am starting to think, I am working with amateurs and have a bad feeling about it.

    What do you think?

    • Gian Piero August 16, 2019Reply

      Hi Thomas, you are obviously right. What is even worse however is that IuteCredit has a half decent balance sheet, a good track record and is audited, while some of the alternative originators that Mintos suggests are of lesser quality. I think we should not expect Mintos to do our risk assessment.

    • RODDY September 1, 2019Reply

      I think they did understood and I noticed today a change on the bottom of the site – they added the capital at risk line:

      2019 All rights reserved
      By using our website you agree to the use of cookies in accordance with our cookies policy.↵
      Investing puts your capital at risk, and past performance does not guarantee future returns. When you invest on Mintos, you acquire loan and other debt receivables. Mintos does not provide investment or asset management services, or any services that are subject to any financial services licence.↵

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12. ThePoorInvestor August 15, 2019Reply

    Hi Oscar,
    I think this is really good work. I will use your rating to evaluate my own risk strategy. You certainly have a different approach than Mintos has, and i kinda like that even though i think Mintos has done a good job.

    I do not know if i have overlooked this, but do you give a lesser grade if the loan originator is not audited?

    Cheers,
    ThePoorInvestor

    • Oscar Harrington Post authorAugust 16, 2019Reply

      Thank you. Providing audited numbers can help increase the score we give for disclosure/reporting quality.

13. Conor August 14, 2019Reply

    I have today 08/14/2019 at least 60% (117 of 216) of ID Finance loans in late a couple of days. Is this normal for rating B+ or score 78 points? Late in various term (1 to 60 days)

14. Loord August 12, 2019Reply

    Hi all, have you seen latest update from Fitch? “Fitch Rates Mogo Finance ‘B-‘; Outlook Stable” – https://www.fitchratings.com/site/pr/10083478?fbclid=IwAR30nPuzBCPJAyD646Lf6c_Nseu9IDvLYbUv-T6iYtD7K_nv1vmVx899TuE

    • Oscar Harrington Post authorAugust 12, 2019Reply

      Thanks for the link Loord. Worth a read for all investors in Mogo loans. We agree with the key points – performance is still OK but the balance sheet has been getting more stretched as it grows its lending faster than its equity. This increased leverage has led us to progressively cut their score over the last 12 months, but they still remain one of the better options available on Mintos right now.

15. Rui August 11, 2019Reply

    Greetings and thanks for your effort. I saw the Mogo annual report for the 2018 year, and there is an independent auditor’s report attached at the end (https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/mintos-prod-public-files/A4F2C903-5005-6EB2-942E-2D391872A301.pdf), but on the table it is showing as Mogo not having been audited, why is this so?

    Cheers!

16. Christian August 8, 2019Reply

    Thanks for the updates Oscar! Did you actually see the quite detailed explanation for the open question regarding the “PLN 3.9m tax bill on pre-tax profits of only PLN 2m” issue for Capital Service? Looks helpful but I am not good enough to understand this :).

    Also, could you somehow keep the “old” Aforti rating on the website so we know how it was before the current situation? This will help in the future for comparison, so would be good to keep all the original numbers in there somehow (also the financial report numbers etc).

    Lastly, I think some score changes are missing in the new column, such as for Varks. I think if you go through the text describing the recent rating changes, all of those should be added, not just the newest ones – in essence, this column should be populated if there was at least one rating change ever, and then the last difference should be put into it. For the monthly updates you provide now, would be nice to have the same format in the first line (like 45 -> 40) so that it is easy and quick to see the change also in the future when there are multiple updates per originator and one wants to see previous rating changes. Great, I just love this site, it also gains so much attention due to your hard work maintaining it!

    Cheers!

17. former_investor August 8, 2019Reply

    Fortunately I did not have any Aforti loans, but this is the last straw for me. My confidence in Mintos was diminishing with each month, now I am certain that when the financial crisis will hit the whole platform will collapse like a house of cards. It is clear that they are just like any other financial institution, meaning, they will not protect the investors. Quite the contrary, we are at the end of the food chain.

    Better leave now with interest earned to date than later with less or nothing.

    • RODDY August 8, 2019Reply

      In my view, this type of investing is like investing in bonds. You have to your own DD when buying corporate bonds, and when doing well, you make good money and it is relatively safe, but you need to spread your risk. Mintos is nothing more than a kind of bonds market, and it is the job of the investor to check in what they are investing it, although they present themself to make it easy for investors, I’m afraid it always comes down to also perform your own research. There is no such thing as receiving 10 procent free or risk in this world.

      • former_investor August 8, 2019Reply

        Hi Roddy,

        I completely agree with your view. Mintos is (now was) my first stab at investing, a successful one. But now I realize that it is not less risky than “traditional” ways, it actually may be more risky. Hence the opinion.

    • Gian Piero August 8, 2019Reply

      I do not have Aforti, simply by sticking to Oscar’s good work. Oscar clearly wrote that he would not touch originators with a rating under 60. Simple and easy to follow. No Aforti. Doing some work one can refine Oscar’s gift to us. Perhaps excluding everybody that is not audited, or perhaps excluding (if you are EUR based) all investments that carry high currency risk. You might accept say an Albanian currency risk with a good originator (estimating it a medium risk), but not invest in an African one whoever the originators is, estimating this as high currency risks. It is also not all about excluding, for example Oscar has EBV under 60, yet I invest because it is invoice financing, the track record is of zero late payments, they are audited, there is no currency risk and the counterparty risk is EU treasuries. True, I invest exclusively in the best 15 originators, but further diversification by only adding risks makes no sense. Clearly making these kind of choices my average return is below 10,00%. Not bad in zero interest world.

18. Victor August 7, 2019Reply

    Mintos and Viventor confirm issues with Aforti loans. Mintos suspends investing and trading of Aforti loans.
    There’s something fishy going on here.
    Is Aforti next Eurocent?
    In Poland again….

    • Oscar Harrington Post authorAugust 7, 2019Reply

      Unfortunately it looks like it Victor. We have updated the page for this new event.

19. Gian Piero August 7, 2019Reply

    Hi Oscar, thanks again for your precious and hard work. I see that you show EBV as not audited. On Mintos you can find 2018 financials audited by Grant Thornton.

    • Oscar Harrington Post authorAugust 7, 2019Reply

      Grazie!

20. Błażej August 7, 2019Reply

    Hello, Oscar! First of all, I’d like to thank you for your great effort maintaining this list. I’ve just seen some loans from new company to me – SOS Credit. Do you have any opinion about them? And one more question – the post mentions updates on 5 August but it still looks same to me as it was in July. Maybe I’m missing something?

    Thanks in advance,
    Błażej

    • Oscar Harrington Post authorAugust 8, 2019Reply

      Thanks Blazej – we’ve now added SOS Credit, and also details of all the August score changes. Thanks for highlighting the new lender.

      • Błażej August 8, 2019Reply

        I am the one to thank you. I’ll give SOS Credit a try

21. Lasse August 5, 2019Reply

    How come EBV Finance has been downgraded when revenue for 2018 was more tran tripled and net profit was more than doubled?

    • Oscar Harrington Post authorAugust 5, 2019Reply

      Increased leverage. Profit was effectively break even (0.3m for 2018) but the company is now levered ~9 to 1 rather compared to ~6 to 1 previously.

      • Rui August 11, 2019Reply

        Can we perhaps get more data columns reflecting all this? Thanks!

22. Rui August 3, 2019Reply

    ITF has their 2018 Statement out as well, though not audited, it seems:
    https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/mintos-prod-public-files/AB6C5DB0-D97E-0903-82B4-39904B4B9BB3.pdf

    • Oscar Harrington Post authorAugust 5, 2019Reply

      Thanks a lot Rui. Have updated tables. That document actually has an auditor stamp on it (if you look closely…)

      • Rui August 6, 2019Reply

        Ah, apologies, could not read the language.

23. Rui August 2, 2019Reply

    I might be mistaken, but it looks to me that the P&L amounts posted for Credius are switched, based on the published report (https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/mintos-prod-public-files/26A87D3F-2B09-E216-52B0-088B90B0A47B.pdf). Figures are in RON on that report, 8,696,445 RON for 2017 and 1,782,210 RON for 2018 or, using the 0.21 rate, ~1.8M EUR and ~0.4M EUR, respectively, which are the switched values on this posted table.
    Someone please check as well.

    • Oscar Harrington Post authorAugust 5, 2019Reply

      Rui isn’t that what the table is showing? EUR 0.4m profit for the latest year (which is in this case 2018), and 1.8m for prior year.

      • Rui August 6, 2019Reply

        Indeed, I was the one with my excel columns switched, too many hours string at this stuff! XD

24. Christian July 25, 2019Reply

    2018 results for Lime Zaim (unfortunately only in Russian, but maybe someone can help in case this poses a problem for the authors here?):
    https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/mintos-prod-public-files/A65F7E8A-601E-25A0-2351-60BCB682E402.pdf

    Peachy has updated numbers in here, but not sure if that is enough to make informed judgement: https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/mintos-prod-public-files/A181BE85-ADBE-B06F-57B0-775335AE1E24.pdf

    • Oscar Harrington Post authorJuly 28, 2019Reply

      Thanks again Christian. We updated the Lime figures a while ago but your comment made us realise we had not updated the latest reporting period figure. Presentations like Peachy drive us crazy – EBITDA is an irrelevant metric for financial companies (as interest costs are one of the most important costs) and it is just used to present a better picture than is really the case..

25. Christian July 25, 2019Reply

    Hi,

    thanks for keeping this up to date and improving it, I have some additional suggestions:

    1) The new format with the rating update overview is very nice, I like it! Maybe please also add the specific date to make it even more clear when this was updated, while keeping the structuring by month.

    2) For ID Finance, the table says just rating “B”, but this is not completely true: It differs among the different countries, might be better to also as B+ / B / B-.

    3) Linking the URL of the latest financial report that the table is based on directly in the first table in an additional column might also be a good idea, so people can check by themselves, this would enhance reproducibility and clarity where they are taken from. Also, if there was a way in WordPress so that people could add new reports in there (as opposed to adding a comment), that might also be the way to go forward.

    4) Lastly, maybe you could also add a column to the table that indicates the direction of change from the last update, and a “-” if there was none.

26. Nuno July 24, 2019Reply

    I agree with most recent posts here
    Oscar has done this community a great service by maintaining and updating all this information about the companies operating on Mintos. I am very thankful that this blog exists.
    Nevertheless we small retail investors are still in the infancy of this sort of financial report analysis; auditors, ratings etc and I agree that there is much room for improvement
    It is very important to be well informed and have a clear picture of what is going on to invest accordingly and lower the risk as much as possible.
    Thank you Oscar, and thank you everyone !

27. GG July 23, 2019Reply

    BTW the author of this post has done a great job and with the help of other posters I believe the list can be kept up-to-date.

    I have some issues with the scoring methodology, especially the equal weighting of the points systems and the fact that the most important measure of risk when you lend money to a company is: impairment allowances (NPL->non performing loans) vs equity (which already includes non distributed profits). Notice that it is useless to consider profit as a good indicator on its own since it includes dividends which are terrrible for lenders to the company since they reduce equity. For example Dineo has great profits, but its risk is high because this past year they decided to distribute almost 95% of their profits and then further finance the company through loans instead of equity (the parent company is really solid, but since there is no guaranteee from the holding company, taken in isolation it does not look great).

    Also it is very important to read the notes of the audited accounts on how the impairment allowances have been calculated: I prefer to look at the amount of late loans so that no subjective management assumptions are included. A few companies like BB Finance for example have made some really wild assumptions in 2018 which are not consistent with 2017 assumptions. It is hard work to read and analyze a full balance sheet.

    Finally the quality of the auditor is really important, some companies are audited by local unknown auditors. They may be good or bad, but a big international auditor company is to be preferred because it will represent less audit risk: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/audit-risk.asp

    Non audited companies are the worst because the risk that the numbers presented are just wishful thinking becomes very high, especially in jurisdictions outside the EU or USA (or other solid jurisdictions) where fiscal audit is weak. Fiscal audit is really the minimum set of controls for a non audited company.

28. Tomas July 23, 2019Reply

    Hi,
    Capital Service published financial reports for the Year 2018 https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/mintos-prod-public-files/76DFC6F9-4B0E-911A-5897-E95A41BBCEDC.pdf

    • IgorJ July 23, 2019Reply

      You can also find 1Q 2019 consolidated financials. The share of equity fell from 23.8% to 10.0% YoY and short-term financial liabilities rose from 33.6% to 65.2% YoY. Net profit is down -84.2%. Link (xlsx file): http://capitalservice.pl/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/I-kwarta%C5%82-2019-podstawowe-skonsolidowane-dane-finansowe-Grupy-Kapita%C5%82owej-CAPITAL-SERVICE.xlsx

      • Oscar Harrington Post authorJuly 25, 2019Reply

        Thanks Igor & Tomas – we’ve updated the table. And if anyone can work out why Capital Service had a PLN 3.9m tax bill on pre-tax profits of only PLN 2m please let us know!!

        • IgorJ July 25, 2019Reply

          Hi Oscar, the answer to your question can be found in the document that was linked by Tomas. If you go to page 82, there is a ‘Note 14’ to the financials. It seems that the company had PLN 39.8m of costs that were not tax deductible. Their income tax basis was actually PLN 7.8m. Would it be possible that they were taxed at 50% tax rate?

          • Vin McQueen August 1, 2019

            Hi guys, please find my explanation and breaking down below. Bottom line is – company has shown tax paid and deferred tax in one line that’s why it is so high.

            1. In Poland (probably not only there, but this I know for sure since I live here :)), tax law doesn’t allow you to deduct write-offs on bad loans from the tax base. IGORJ made a good point, in note 14 there is a breaking down, how from PLN 2.1m gross profit, they made it to PLN 7.8m tax basis – those 39.8 he mentioned is mostly write-offs on bad loans. It was mostly netted by interests they should get by they didn’t and others, so they finally landed at PLN 7.8m tax basis. CIT rate in Poland is 19%, so we have PLN 1.49m tax but we still missing PLN 2.44m tax. Consider above as step 1.

            2. Step 2 – provisions (reserves) for deferred tax – when you go to Note 10, you’ll find there a line “Rezerwa z tytułu odroczonego podatku dochodowego” which means provisions for deferred tax. In 2018 they made PLN 909k but they released PLN 133k, which gives PLN 776k additional tax shown in income statement. Still missing PLN 1.66m.

            3. Step 3 – Deferred tax assets – when you go to balance sheet, to assets, you’ll find there a line “Aktywa z tytułu odroczonego podatku dochodowego” which means deffered tax assets. Difference between balance at the end of 2017 (PLN 2,275k) and at the end of 2018 (PLN 613k) gives us missing PLN 1.66m.

            This is pretty difficult to understand without knowledge of accounting and tax rules, so it doesn’t surprise me, this needed explanation – I myself was wondering what is going on in this financial statement and needed refresh knowledge from my accounting classes 🙂

            Hope it helps!

29. GG July 22, 2019Reply

    BB Finance Group has recently (12.07.2019) published the consolidated 2018 accounts here: https://ariregister.rik.ee
    They are audited by KPMG (so a very solid auditor) and the results are not good at all. I purchased it for 2 euros, the report is in Estonian language but can easily be translated by google translate and the main problem is the following:
    Net loss of 1.1 million euros. Equity capital reduced by approx 1.5M euros

    “There was another change in regulations in Georgia significantly limiting the issue of consumer credit, which led to the decision to suspend operations in Georgia. The loss for the reporting period was largely due to the developments in the Georgian market in 2018
    In the second half of the year, large-scale investments in marketing were made.
    It was also decided to close the Czech market in 2019, based on a small share of the Group portfolio, but the time cost was equal to or even higher than the home market.”

    In addition their late loans doubled from 2017 to 2018 to more than 10M EUR, but their impairment allowances increased ONLY by 13%! (estimates made by management which auditors warn are a risk)

    Another bad event was the sale of bad loans that accrued a 2.9M loss (double of 2017). In addition they took a loan of almost 5M expiring in 2021 (which if things do not improve represents a serious liability in just 2 years time).

    it definitely should not have a Mintos A- rating and its rating here should be much lower in my opinion.

    • RODDY July 26, 2019Reply

      Thanks for the info. I guess Oscar did not have the time yet, but definitely a drop in rating.

30. Gian Piero July 22, 2019Reply

    Hi Christian, you make a very valid point regarding reputation. One company of a group can have a bad year and the others help even if there is no group guarantee. This is a reasonable expectation. I have no inside information but it appears to me that in this case ID Finance made the deliberated choice to extract Spain from the group. Sending a very clear message that Spain is on its own. Before it was 100% part of the group, now it is zero percent part of the group. Invest accordingly.