The European P2P investment platform Robo.cash recently conducted a survey among P2P investors. According to its results, the popularity of P2P investments is on the rise: 69% of the respondents started investing over the last two years, and 35% of investors allocated more than €10,000 on P2P lending platforms in 2018.
Compared to a similar survey conducted by Robo.cash in 2017, the age group of P2P investors hasn’t changed significantly: the majority of them (52%) still belong to the generation of Millenials (23-38 years old). The typical P2P investor is well-educated: 37% of respondents hold a Master’s degree or higher, and 26% have a Bachelor’s degree. 9% of respondents mentioned that finance had been their major at the university.
“The growing size of investments on P2P platforms reflects the increased trust in fintech in general. According to the data by Edelman Trust Barometer, the trust to companies that belong to the category of Financial Services has grown from 49 points in 2015 to 57 points in 2019, which is the maximum increase among all categories. It is expected that positive changes influencing fintech will occur in the European market in particular,” Robo.cash and Robocash Group CEO & Founder Sergey Sedov told Crowdfund Insider via email. “The expectation of Brexit and adoption of Payment Services Directive (PSD2) caused a gradual movement of financial centres from London to the EU capitals and formation of single regulatory space in the EU.This makes the EU market more attractive, and may result in the rapid fintech development in the near future.”
The majority of respondents belong to the working category: 75% of them work full time or part time, and 13% run business. At the same time, only 3% of investors mentioned career as a life priority. This can be explained by the fact that job is not the only source of income for investors. Thus, 28% named P2P investments a major source of additional income. Also, 47% rely on income from investments to secure enough money for retirement
As shown by the survey, the preferred type of investments is consumer loans (35%). Regarding the loan duration, 51% of respondents prefer short-term loans, as they ensure a high turnover of investments, whereas only 10% chose long-term loans. Along with consumer loans, the respondents mostly invest in shares (25%), real estate (20%), SMEs (9%) and bonds (9%).
The findings of the survey prove the growing popularity of P2P investments over the last years: 69% of respondents started investing 2 years ago or less, while only 11% have been investing for more than 5 years. Besides, the majority of investors (35%) allocated more than €10,000 on P2P platforms in 2018. On the whole, respondents showed a positive attitude towards P2P investments: 80% of them think about increasing the volume of investments on P2P platforms in the next few years.
The survey was launched by Robo.cash at the beginning of February and lasted for 3 weeks. In total, it involved over 350 people from 28 countries with different background and investing experience.
Since launching two years ago, Robo.cash has raised 5.6 million EUR of investments, which allowed the platform to finance 760,000 loans totaling 66 million EUR in its Spain, Russia and Kazakhstan locations.