If you are here, it means you want to know something about Swaper peer-to-peer lending platform. I cover everything worth to know about Swaper in this review.
The Swaper review is 100% unbiased and based on my personal experience and findings. In the Swaper review, I will give my personal opinion of their service. I will include the subjective aspects which I personally like, and the objective facts – like statistics.
Swaper Overview
- Loan types: Consumer loans
- Loan term: 30 days or less
- Interest rate: 12% (14%)
- Auto-invest: Yes
- Buyback guarantee: Yes
- Fees and costs: Free
- Minimum investment: €10
- Currencies: EUR
- Secondary market: Yes
- Sign-up link: Swaper
What is Swaper P2P Lending Platform?
Swaper was founded back in October 2016. Currently, Swaper has over 2500 active investors, who together have received over 1,3 million euro in interest. Swaper offers a 12% interest on all loans. However, it is possible to get 14% in interest if your total portfolio size is €5000 or above.
Furthermore, the total investments made on Swaper is quickly growing towards €100 million.
Swaper is a loan provider who offers pre-funded unsecured consumer loans. All loans issued on Swaper is from the parent company Wandoo Finance Group.
The loans issued through Swaper by the Wandoo Finance Group is loans originating from Poland, Spain, and Denmark.
How Does Swaper Work?
Swaper is based on a very simple concept: Borrower applies for a loan from Wandoo Finance Groups loan originators, once the loan is issued by the loan originators, it is placed on the Swaper platform making it available for investment.
To become an investor on Swaper you must be at least 18 years of age. Furthermore, you must be a resident of a European Economic Area (EEA). If you are over 18 years old and a resident in an EAA country you can sign up on Swaper.
Swaper has both an app for Android and iOS. From here you can both invest and sign up.
Getting Started on Swaper
Signing up on Swaper is a 3 step process. The process is simple and requires you to verify your identity. This is due to the European law of preventing money laundering and criminality financing.
When you have signed up at Swaper you can start depositing money to the platform.
How to Invest on Swaper
When you are a registered investor with funds on your account you can invest in the loans from the loan list. However, Swaper rarely has any loans available. Therefore, it is difficult to find available loans. I, therefore, recommend that you use the auto-invest tool. This will help you to get in loans when they are published, as they are funded quickly.
The investing structure is therefore:
- Manual investing – Select and investing in individual loans
- Auto-invest – Specify investment parameters and automatically invest when loans are available.
Manual Investing Through Swaper’s Loan List
While the loan list is usually empty because the auto-invest takes all the loans whenever they become available, you can see the recent statistics of posted loans.
The loan list allows you to pick from which countries you want, the loan term and the status of the loan.
There is a term which is used for the lack of available investments: Cash-drag. Swaper is therefore prone to having cash-drag because of the limited amount of loans.
Swaper Auto-invest
The auto-invest on Swaper is very simple. You can choose to customize the interest rate, maximum investment in one loan, loan term and the countries.
The picture I have inserted above is my personal investment strategy. I take all interest rates, loan terms, and countries. However, I do not invest in delayed or extended loans. To reduce the risk I opted out of extended and delayed loans. Normally I expect bad borrowers to get extended time to pay their loans. For that reason I do not want extended or delayed loans.
Loan Originators on Swaper
The loan originator on Swaper is the parent company: Wandoo Finance Group.
Wandoo Finance provides financial services including payday loans. When one of Wandoo Finance subsidiaries has founded a loan in Poland, Spain or Denmark it is posted to Swaper for investors.
Swaper Team and Organization
Swaper’s parent company, Wandoo Finance Group has expertise within IT systems. Swaper is able to leverage Wandoo Finances’ vast technological expertise. Furthermore, Wandoo Finance Group has a management team of professionals. The founder Iveta Brūvele has over 11 years of experience in the financial sector. Furthermore, she has been a board member in a number of companies which is providing financial services.
Among the management team, there are multiple master’s degrees and years of experience within the financial field.
While the Wandoo Finance Group is not technically Swaper, they are governed by the Wandoo Finance Group. Therefore, actions made by Wandoo Finance Group will reflect the Swaper platform.
Swaper has won the “Best European P2P Loan Platform 2019”. In the interview, the product owner at Swaper was interviewed. She has stated that Swaper will launch a range of exciting products and features in the near future.
Furthermore, she says that in 2019 focus is to grow both sides of the marketplace to satisfy the increasing number of investors.
Swaper Trustpilot
Swaper is not received with open arms on their Trustpilot page. However, the critic Swaper is getting is the lack of available loans. An investor has wanted to invest manually and cannot find any loans. After setting the auto-invest he did not get any loans for days.
Currently, that is just how Swaper works. There is not a lot of loans available. However, the other review of Trustpilot is rather positive.
Swaper has a TrustScore of 5,9/10 and 3/5 stars.
Swaper Financial Statement
There is no public financial statements from Swaper. Furthermore, it is impossible to find Wandoo Finance Group’s financial statement. However, it is possible to find their Lativian registration here. However, to view any financials I would have to log in somehow.
However, I have found the Danish department of Wandoo Finance’s financial statement from 2017. While it is only a fraction of the whole business group, it can be used to some extent to understand their use of money. The full statement can be found here.
The main highlights are as follows:
- –905.181 profit
- Total assets of 607.167
- Total liabilities of 1.462.348
These highlights are not very satisfying to see as an investor. While this is only a fraction of the whole Wandoo Finance Group it is not pleasing to find so big deficits. In essence, they have 2.367.529 worth of expenses and liabilities, while they only have 607.167 worth of assets.
Is Swaper Safe?
First of all, Swaper is regulated under The Republic of Latvia. Latvia is a commonplace for P2P lending platforms to establish a marketplace. Latvia is, therefore, working towards implementing specific regulations covering marketplace lending.
Furthermore, Latvia is a part of the European Union. Which requires registration of its customers to prevent money laundering and criminal financing.
Lastly, Swaper guarantees that the funds you have deposited to their bank accounts will be transferred from their accounts to you within two working days after receiving your request for withdrawal.
Swaper Buyback Guarantee
Swaper will buyback any loans which is more than 30 days overdue if the loans is supported by the buyback. In case the loan do not have buyback, you can always sell it on the secondary market. The loan will typically be sold immediately due to the low demand for loans on the Swaper platform.
If a borrower does not meet the repayment schedule Swaper will take a range of actions to collect the debt:
- Contact the borrower and remind them of missed payments
- The borrower can then chose between a full repayment or to extend the loan for 30 days.
- In the case no payments are made, the loan originator will initiate a debt collection process.
- If the debt collection process does not succeed, they might decide to pursue the collection of debt in court.
Fees and Costs
The costs of using Swaper is zero. There are no management fees, success fees, business fees, accounting fees or other fees or costs. It is currently 100% free to use as an investor.
Swaper Android and iOS App
The mobile application has all the features of the website. You can create or adjust your auto-invest setting, you get daily, weekly and monthly income updates. Furthermore, you get a total overview of your portfolio.
It is pleasing to see a smaller platform that actually have a well-functioning app.
My Personal Experience With Swaper and Swaper Income
My experience so far has been pleasant. My Swaper income interest has been averaging between 5% to 19%. This is mainly because of the little portfolio size I have on Swaper. However, it is also due to the amount of extended and delayed loans.
I have invested in a total of ~€570 worth of loans in the time I have been invested on Swaper. The total amount of buybacks is 267 (including both principal and interest). The amount that has actually been repaid in time is €303. While this is an indicator that Swaper is good at collecting debt, it is sadly also an indicator that Swaper has a lot of bad borrowers.
Needless to say, my income has been quite satisfactory based on the amount invested and the amount received. My actual annual return has been 10%.
What can be seen from the graph is that the income is in no way stable. However, it can be questioned how reliable it can be with a Swaper account this small.
| Month | Swaper income | Swaper portfolio value | XIRR |
| Sep-18 | 66,91 | ||
| Oct-18 | 0,3 | 67,21 | 5,38% |
| Nov-18 | 0,85 | 68,06 | 15,18% |
| Dec-18 | 0,51 | 68,57 | 8,99% |
| Jan-19 | 0,42 | 68,99 | 7,35% |
| Feb-19 | 0,66 | 69,65 | 11,48% |
| Mar-19 | 0,46 | 70,11 | 7,93% |
| Apr-19 | 0,73 | 70,84 | 12,49% |
| May-19 | 0,73 | 71,57 | 12,37% |
| Jun-19 | 0,4 | 71,97 | 6,71% |
| Jul-19 | 1,15 | 73,12 | 19,17% |
| Aug-19 | 0,1 | 73,22 | 1,64% |
| Sep-19 | 0,44 | 73,66 | 7,21% |
| Oct-19 | 0,88 | 74,54 | 14,34% |
| Nov-19 | 0,54 | 75,08 | 8,69% |
| Dec-19 | 0,81 | 75,89 | 12,95% |
The table also illustrates the varying XIRR over the months. The XIRR is the expected annual return from the income the given month with the given size of portfolio value. What can be seen is that the expected return has been down to 5,38% in October 2018, while it has also been at 19,17% in July 2019.
Personal Investment Strategy With Swaper
My personal strategy is very simple. I use only the auto-invest, I never try to use the manual investing method.
I use every loan term, interest rate and country I can get. However, I do not include extended and delayed loans.
I do not include extended and delayed loans to prevent as many defaults and late payments as possible. While I just described that about half of all my loans were bought back, I will try to minimize this effect as much as possible. Luckily there is an accruing interest on late payments.
Similar P2P Lending Platform
Similar platforms to Swaper are listed below. The platforms listed also provide similar returns and issue consumer loans.
Conclusion
My conclusion is that Swaper is a very good platform for passive income. After you set the auto-invest there is nothing left to do. You cannot chose between loan originators, loan types or industries. Therefore, the diversification on Swaper is limited to consumer loans, with a 12% interest rate, within Denmark, Spain or Poland.
The above combined with the cash-drag on the platform makes the platform unfavorable. However, I have received all my interest and principle. Therefore, the cash-drag and lots of buybacks do not equal to low-interest rates.
I would recommend Swaper for anyone who has the tolerance for the late payments. Remember you will accrue interest even when the loans are late.
Frequently Asked Questions of Swaper
Is Swaper safe?
No investment is ever safe. However, Swaper is like a stock broker, they distribute the loans. Therefore, Swaper is safe, but the loans you can be unsafe. Swaper is a department in the Wandoo Finance Group and based on its size, I value Swaper is one of the safe European P2P lending platforms. Furthermore, Swaper’s loans protected by buyback guarantee.
What is the intereste on Swaper?
The interest on Swaper is fixed to 12% per year. When investing €5.000 or more you gain 2% additional interest, hence a total of 14% per year.
Buyback Guarantee on Swaper
The buyback offered by Swaper gives the investor compensation for both principal and interest if the borrower fails to repay the loan within 30 days.
