Inside Bondora – 7 questions with Kairo

Bondora News

Kairo KraanerDear readers. We are more than happy to put the spotlight on the people inside Bondora. We start to introduce you to our people who make things happen behind-the-scenes and who impact the global financial technology scene. First up is the always digital Kairo Kraaner.

What do you do here at Bondora?
I joined Bondora in December 2014 and am leading the borrower business teams. My goal is to make sure that the daily work of all the teams that are responsible for Bondora’s loan product work together towards offering the best service for our customers. Currently I have 30 people in 5 teams making sure that customers have a great experience on Bondora. My team is full of professionals who are experts in their fields. It’s a pleasure to work with them and also very motivating to be part of an environment where your colleagues possess a high level of knowledge in various fields and provide new insight to me as well.

For me it’s important to have the right people work together, providing better solutions for our customers and helping to bring our business to the next level globally. People who work here possess the “get things done” attitude – everyone has to get their hands dirty at some point, especially during times when we have to act very fast inside the teams.

I’m personally kind of a data nerd and a strong believer of numbers and pulling the right information out of raw data. My team’s long-term goal is to be „The best loan product in Europe“. I like the idea of that, a lot.

You are also an investor on Bondora. Why did you start investing here?
That’s true. I made my first investment on Bondora in 2013, a year before I started working here. What fascinated me most was the concept of peer-to-peer lending – that platforms are bringing together the people who want to invest money with the people who want to borrow money. Back then I only had experience with real estate but I was looking for a way to diversify and came across P2P lending. I particularly like the high returns and the simplicity behind it.

How do you invest on Bondora – automatically or hand-picking loans?
I consider myself an active investor, mostly because of the fact that I invest manually and like to hand-pick loans from the Primary and Secondary Markets. It gives me the flexibility I want and I can use different filters that are important for my decision making. In return, this strategy gives me the control over my investments.

What would you recommend to investors taking their first steps on Bondora?
First of all, people who start should first understand what is the concept behind P2P lending and what the risks are. My tip would definitely be to try to spread your money over many loans. So, to have a diversified portfolio is in fact quite important and it will also protect you in tough times. In Bondora’s case, the Portfolio Manager makes it easy to start because automation helps you invest in more loans with the bid size of €5. Later on, when your portfolio grows you can custom the bid size to any amount and start bidding with higher stakes.

What do you like most about the P2P lending asset class?
I like when my money is making money and nothing sits idle in the bank account. With P2P lending you can start with small amounts but as with everything else in life you have to be consistent. In order to continuously expand your portfolio P2P lending enables to immediately reinvest the monthly interest and repaid amount. So far, the P2P asset class has proven to deliver decent returns to investors, especially when you compare it to fixed term deposits offered by the banks. I know that P2P is usually considered as a rather illiquid asset class but in Bondora for example we have quite an active Secondary Market for selling loans with discount or mark-up.

Your favorite books-blogs-podcasts or people to get inspiration from?
My daily digest varies between digital marketing and investing blogs and FinTech news. I’m a digital man and as the business of digital marketing and FinTech changes very fast, I like to stick to blogs instead of books. Here’s a list of blogs that are in my daily routine: Avinash Kaushik, Analytics, Search Engine Land, Moz blog, ConversionXL and AltFi news.

To wrap up, describe Bondora or the everyday life here in three words?
Work hard, have fun and make money. :)