Will UK investors embrace P2P lending in Estonia?

tybalt: are you by any chance acting as a spokesperson for Mr V Putin ? If so, that is good news.

Good news for whom?  My worry is Estonia might not be a step too far for Mr P...

Re the OP, hasn't Bondora already got Estonia sewn up? Is there room for another platform in such a small country (pop. 1.3 million, GDP <2% of UK)? Plus the website seems to be struggling (I can only get in some of the time), the "English" pages are partly in Estonian, and the "team" appears to be one person: "Mikk Jaeger". Very rock and roll! I will pass.

Edit: crossed with Tybalt's post.

I'd steer clear of sushi bars for a few days if I were you

I have been lending to Estonian borrowers for two years via Bondora. In principle I would lend to businesses there. The risk is higher than a home-grown platform for a range of reasons:

1. One of my banks was unhappy about me sending money to Estonia because the country was on a high risk of money laundering list. They told me to stop doing this.
2. Lending is in Euros so there is exchange rate risk as well as lending risk.

If expected return for the interest rates is good enough they could be attractive. Initial competition is more than 10% for secured lending via Ablrate with no exchange rate risk. Bondora's target return of 12% is not sufficient to beat that. A harder to understand return to beat is some venture capital trusts, a UK tax wrapper that provides a 30% of purchase price refund from the government then tax free interest, one or two of these offer rates equivalent to more than 10% tax free and for Bondora comparisons I would need 15% plus allowance for exchange rate risk to match or maybe beat that, probably more. If rates at Investly are the 15% described it is unlikely that I would invest via Investly, unless, maybe, the loans were secured on good security. The bad debt rate is very important and given the competition I do not think that it would be worth my time to consider Investly today.

The company profile and presentation very strongly discourages me from trusting the company and on that evidence I would avoid doing business with the firm.

I worry that the firm may be misleading investors about its size and employee count. Honesty is very important, even more so in a country with high money laundering risk. Beyond that risk it is certain that at some time Investly will do things that investors do not like and a good record of honesty will help to improve the way such things are received.

The description of the identification system worries me and I am concerned that it may not meet the "enhanced" identity fraud detection requirements that I expect to apply to at least borrowers of Investly.