Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest blogger and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Bondora.
My journey
My name is Ariana Nunes, I am currently a financial educator and I started my investing journey with the aim of reaching a more secure financial position. At the beginning, I tried to read all I could about financial education and investments. I then moved on to watching many specialist videos and also experimented with demo accounts and with cryptocurrency exchanges, learning how the commands and processes from those investment platforms work.
Later, I started to study fundamentalist analysis and techniques of the financial markets and it was during that time, while looking for investment opportunities in Portugal that I found out about the world of P2P.
The concept of having my money invested returning compound interest that was higher than if I were investing in a bank caught my attention and I quickly invested some euros so I could test Portuguese and Spanish P2P platforms.
The idea was to start with a diversified portfolio, as that was already my strategy on the stock market. I wanted to reach a level that I had set for myself, over a determined time period, in a very passive way because I was always working.
At the end of 2017, after I had discovered that there was very little information regarding financial education in Portugal—even less if we think about investments for personal finances and available products—I decided to create my own channel called Renda Maior. But I didn’t have the courage straight away to record and be the host of a YouTube channel. That courage only came in the following year, when, after many thoughts and deliberation, I finally published my first video.
Today, that YouTube channel is one of the main financial references in my country, where I talk about various financial topics, among them P2P lending (because it was a new investment type, especially for Portuguese people). I have already answered many questions; from simple ones, such as using these different investment platforms, up to more complex ones, like for example, taxes. I have been working hard to show that P2P platforms are an investment that will stay and currently they are already part of many people’s portfolios (with success cases).
Investing in Bondora
After my experience with the national and Iberic platforms, I started to see that there was another type of offer, P2P crowdlending, and during some random research, I found Bondora.
Initially, I used the manual Portfolio Pro to invest my money but, I quickly opted for Go & Grow that was launched some months after I registered.
Today, I have a goal to reach, and Bondora is helping me by simplifying and adding parameters. It allows for a more focused plan, which stimulates our motivation, and shows us how our money grows daily.
The fact that we can invest a little money every month and get a good yield has allowed me to reach many goals so far.
The future of P2P
Without a doubt, the scams perpetrated by some platforms shocked the P2P industry, and now with the pandemic crisis, many people are questioning those companies’ survivability. The truth is that distrust, fear and other questions have been raised, and rightly so. Regulators and supervisors failed and with that, new hard challenges have come for P2P to solve.
In my opinion the business model is viable, it was always used extensively by financial institutions, and because of that I believe in the continuity of this model. It has cut many costs and taxes that were charged by banks and credit companies as intermediaries, and now those transactions are cheaper.
Will some P2P companies close their doors? Yes, most likely. The market will naturally eliminate the weaker elements that are not well managed. Will there be fusions with traditional financial institutions that are now seeing P2P’s potential? Probably yes. They can even implement a new loaning model, which can be improved for the client/investor.
All of that can happen, but one thing is certain: P2P is part of the present and they are disruptive, so they can definitely innovate even more. Let’s pay attention to what is going to happen.*
*All the content in this article is only my personal opinion. Always consult a certified specialist or make your own analysis when it comes to investing.
Disclaimer: This text was originally written in Portuguese and translated to English. All translations were done based on the translated English document. Even though we try our best to provide accurate translations, there might be slight differences due to the different languages and cultural nuances.