TWINO Investors can now Invest in GBP

TWINO CEO Jevgenijs Kazanins announced the update at the AltFi Europe Summit 2016. 

Consumer lender TWINO has announced the launch of a new functionality that allows investors to choose the currency that they want to invest in – either EUR or GBP. Prior to this update, users were only allowed to invest in euros and investors that held their investable assets in British Pounds were exposed to currency risk. 

Owned and operated by FINABAY – an international financial services company – TWINO is a marketplace for unsecured consumer loans in Poland, Denmark and Georgia. All loans that are listed on TWINO are originated and serviced by FINABAY lending companies. The platform advertises an expected return of up to 14.9% per year.

Jevgenijs has been concerned  that currency risk could seriously undermine his investors’ returns. With this new functionality, the platform has levelled the playing field for European investors and British investors. 

Jengenijs offered comment: 

“We are happy to be the first platform in Continental Europe to launch investing in British Pounds. Continental Europe offers the opportunity to earn premium returns, and now investors from the UK can use this opportunity without the exposure to the currency risk,”

Jevgenijs – former Chief Marketing Officer at Bondora – joined TWINO as CEO last October. We caught up with him then to delve deeper into the platform. TWINO’s central USP is a “buyout guarantee” mechanism that protects investor money from currency and default risk. Last November, the platform’s total investment volume reached €2.4 million. Exactly one month removed from launch, €1 million had been invested in loans from Poland, Denmark and Georgia.

According to the Liberum AltFi Volume Index (Continental Europe), the European marketplace lending space delivered y-o-y growth in excess of 100% in 2015, with a special contribution made by Baltic States platforms, including TWINO. Looking to the year ahead, AltFi Data recently used historic data to project the likely loan origination volumes of the many European platforms in 2016. TWINO is expected to increase loan origination flows from €3m to €20m, with an impressive y-o-y growth rate of 567%.