The Robocash Group has been operating since 2010. It established a P2P site in 2017 to help it fund its activities. The P2P operations are based in Riga, Latvia. You can read our interview with the CEO of Robocash, Sergey Sedov here. The Robocash Group is one of the larger loan originators to offer P2P loans in Europe. As at June 2020 they had $71 million of assets and $42 million of equity. They are one of our highest rated loan originators due to their strong balance sheet and high profit levels. You can find our latest ratings here.

Typical rates at Robocash are currently 12% but they do tend to fluctuate and have been as high as 14% in the past. All loans come with a buyback guarantee for any loans that have a repayment delay of more than 30 days. In test portfolios we have run, the credit quality has been strong, with only around 10% of loans being overdue at any point in time. That is a low percentage for the type of lending that Robocash does. Most of the loans offered are 7-30 day ‘payday’ style loans but the group offers loans up to 12 months of duration.

Unlike most other sites, it does not give investors the option to individually select loans. Instead, investors are required to make use of the auto-invest tools. The auto-invest tool has most of the options available at other P2P sites. Investors can choose the interest rate range they want to receive, which countries to invest in, loan maturity length,  maximum investment per loan, and reinvestment options. Multiple auto-invest portfolios can be created, and we would recommend taking advantage of this, particularly so that geographic diversification can be controlled by the investor. We prefer to create portfolios for each country with size limits on each, rather than leaving it to algorithms to allocate loans.  

We think that Robocash could make some improvements to the layout and usability of its website. Some features are not described or explained very well. In particular it is not obvious how to tell the website to direct any spare funds into a particular auto-invest portfolio. The investor summary page that investors see when they log into their account is also a little bit confusing and could be improved. However, the platform itself seems to operate effectively, and it is relatively easy to keep all funds fully invested. 

The country options currently offered are Spain, Kazakhstan, Vietnam and Singapore. The Singapore option is slightly unusual in that the funds are lent to a Robocash Asian holding company located in Singapore. It then uses the funds to lend to subsidiaries in various countries such as Indonesia. Robocash says that all loans are backed by a group guarantee.

Sending money to Robocash can be difficult for investors outside of the Eurozone. We have experienced some difficulties in sending test deposits to Robocash using payment services such as Transferwise and Paysera. Robocash does not accept Transferwise deposits, and Paysera required significant AML checks to be undertaken before releasing the funds. This will not impact the majority of people who have Eurozone bank accounts but it is something to consider for investors located in the UK and other non-EU countries that do not have bank accounts that are part of the SEPA system.

Robocash offers an incentive scheme to reward investors who place larger sized deposits. To qualify, investors need to invest at least €5,000. Investors receive higher interest rates on their portfolio as the amount they invest increases. The additional interest earned starts at 0.3% and increases to 1% for people who have invested a minimum of €25,000.