The Erasmus of savings #1 – Cross-border lending

 

Lendix is a European crowdlending platform already active in 3 countries: France, Spain and Italy. New openings have been announced in Germany and The Netherlands so that the platform will be active in 5 European countries by the end of the year.
Without sinking into clichés we were surprised after analyzing our datas internally, to see how Spanish lending behaviors would differ from the Italian and French ones. We thought this could be interesting for you as well.

 

Quick reminder: one of the main characteristic of Lendix is that all of our Lenders can invest in every Projects regardless of the company’s country of origin. An Italian living in Spain can lend to a French Project without any problem, at the very same conditions and without any additional fee. This is called the Europe of savings, i.e. an European community of Lenders investing directly in the European real economy.

 

Why lend to projects from different countries? 

Diversification of the Portfolio is key in order to contain the risk of capital loss. Main diversification criteria are risk level, duration, rating and industries. Lending to projects based in France, Spain and Italy allow the portfolio to diversify geographically and thus reduce economic dependence or overweight a single country. Now that we have summed up what the Europe of savings is, let us have a look to our Lenders habits.

 

Cultural analysis

Do lenders from different countries have any particular investing behavior? Is a French Lender’s behavior really different from an Italian one? Are Spanish Lenders willing to take more risks than the others? Find out with this cultural analysis.

 

With more than 11.000 active Lenders, were funded since the creation of Lendix (at 28/02/18):
  • 332 French projects,
  • 25 Spanish projects,
  • 26 Italian projects.

 

Our different active Lenders come from:
  • France: 9,362 Lenders,
  • Italy: 322 Lenders,
  • Spain: 501 Lenders,
  • International: 1,082 Lenders.

 

PS: a Lender is considered as active when he/she lended to at least one project.

 

What are the ideal projects for our different types of Lenders?

Good to know:  the average amount invested by our Lenders per project is 123€.
French Lenders
Spanish Lenders
Italian Lenders
French Lenders are more appealed by grade A projects refunded in 36-48 months.
 Spanish Lenders are pretty risk advert and tend to lend to grades A and A+ projects, but are not afraid of long-term refunds.
They seem to be more willing to take risks with an appeal for grade B projects, even if they prefer shorter-term projects (0-24 months).

 

Synthesis

In general, our Lenders tend to invest 11% more on grades A, A+ ans B+ projects, than on grades B and C projects. Duration has a low impact in terms of invested amounts. Lenders are more sensitive to duration for small projects* (they invest 32% more on long term projects than in short-term projects).
*A project is considered small” when the amount borrowed is equal or less than 100.000€ (for the recall, the minimum borrowing amount is 30.000€). Learn more

 

“Home is where my loans are”

In average, Lenders globally tend to invest more in their own countries. Indeed, they invest 12% more, in average, in their country of origin. This may be explained by a better knowledge of the local economy and local context which foment a greater investment in projects that share the nationality of the lenders. Nevertheless, the same way the Erasmus project changed mentalities, Lenders have started thinking “European” to boost their savings and it is possible that this number will evolve in the future!
Do not miss the next episode of the Erasmus of savings: we are going to dig a bit and understand what requirements Lendix is responding to in different Countries in order to make it possible.

How to lend to projects from different countries?

Exactly the same way as lending to projects of your own country! Taxation is the same, because it depends on the lender’s tax residence (and not on the project country of origin). There is one difference on taxation: in France it is possible to a certain extend to deduct losses from gains on projects, this is not yet possible in Spain nor in Italy. Learn out more