New dashboard and portfolio manager for our retail investors

Bondora News

We have great news for you this week – with excitement we are introducing our new dashboard and automated investment tool. Over the years Bondora has consistently delivered industry leading double digit returns to investors. With this new chapter in our story we will continue working hard to make investing a joyful experience. “The new dashboard and Portfolio Manager both will provide retail investors ease of use and they will love the simplicity”, says Pärtel Tomberg, CEO of Bondora.

MORE SIMPLICITY

We have improved our Portfolio Manager with a simple interface where investing has been fully automated by our technology, leaving out unnecessary complexity. Automation helps you invest in more loans and thereby reduces the risks of some borrowers not repaying. „Our aim is to provide passive investors a high risk adjusted return with minimum amount of manual work“, notes Tomberg.

New dashboard is now a single control center to track and adjust your portfolio

bondora old dashboard

The new dashboard will give you at a glance overview of your account leaving out the hunt for key data points across our web. We have updated dashboard statistics for value and profitability of your account. Additionally the deposit, withdrawal sections and Portfolio Manager have been combined into a single easy-to-use dashboard.

KEY BENEFITS

  1. You can immediately see the net profit of your portfolio on top of account value and net annualized return we were already showing
  2. You can add and withdraw funds from the dashboard
  3. You can immediately adjust your Portfolio Manager based on your investment/portfolio performance

New Portfolio Manager is now fully automated

PM3

NEW FEATURES

  1. Easy To Set Up

You can start investing in only two steps: first, select your desired target risk-return and second, agree to terms & conditions. The Portfolio Manager does the rest.

  1. Continuous Investment

Once you have set up the Portfolio Manager it will continue investing according to your chosen risk-return without you having to reactivate it at any point in time. You still have the chance to pause it at any point of time.

  1. Automatic Risk Balancing

The Portfolio Manager will monitor the current risk-return of your portfolio and continuously correct future investment to match the level you have selected. E.g. it will target lower risk loans when your portfolio risk level is higher than the selected risk-return.

  1. Automatic Diversification

The Portfolio Manager will take into account your portfolio size and will adjust the size of each investment that provides an optimal diversification level. Larger portfolios will invest in larger amounts and smaller portfolios in lower amounts. Bid amount changes as your portfolio size changes.

Are you an active investor? We have not forgotten you!

In the upcoming releases we also plan to roll out Bondora API (Application Program Interface) that allows active investors have their own customized investment strategies and reporting. There are already multiple 3rd party tools available in the market, e.g. LendTower has already announced to support our API. But until the new Bondora API is out, continue like you have invested before – hand-picking loan applications from the primary and secondary market (tabs Market and Sec. Market accordingly).

NOW LET´S GET TECHNICAL

If you are interested how the new dashboard and Portfolio Manager work under the hood then go ahead – read further to understand all the details.

What is the logic behind new „Account Value“?

Account value adds together your cash balance, reserved amount and outstanding portfolio. We subtract overdue payments to arrive at the net account value. This is how much we think your account at Bondora is worth.

What is the logic behind “Net Profit”?

We calculate the Net Profit of your portfolio by adjusting the Account Value. We subtract deposits and any outstanding loans you have and add withdrawals. In case you have deposited 1,000 euro, have an outstanding loan of 50 euro, have withdrawn 200 and your account value is 1,200 euro then your Net Profit is 1,200+200-1,000-50=350 euro.

How does automatic risk balancing work?

Portfolio Manager continuously measures the risk-return of your portfolio by calculating its weighted average risk. This risk factor is compared to the risk-return target you have set through the product interface. This calculation is done before each investment decision to determine the types of loans that can be added to your portfolio. The technology only invests in portfolios of loans that help you reach your target risk-return. In all of these calculations preference is given over reducing the risks over increasing the returns. This means that higher risk loans are only added to your portfolio when your portfolio risk is lower than the target not when the returns are lower than your target.

How does automatic diversification work?

The new Portfolio Manager is truly a single control center for your portfolio. Our technology adjusts the size of each investment amount based on the number of unique borrowers in your portfolio. We do not discriminate based on how you made the investment – every borrower with a performing loan is included in the calculations. The system carefully increases the investment size as your active portfolio grows whilst making sure the risks do not increase. The investment size can also be adjusted downwards if the size of your portfolio starts decreasing.

The minimum bid size is 5 euro and maximum 80 euro. The bid size is doubled after each time your portfolio increases by 200 loans. 200 is an important number because analysis of the investors’ portfolios shows that the risks of a portfolio substantially decrease after reaching 200 unique loans. This means that your portfolio return becomes stable and on 95% of cases is above 10% of return. Therefore increasing the size of the investments after each 200 new loans allows you to lend your money faster without increasing risks.

How are investments placed on the market?

Portfolio Managers invest into new loan applications periodically throughout the day. The preference between different investors is set so that each investor on average has the same waiting time to invest all of their available capital providing for a very fair marketplace.

The Portfolio Manager analyses your current portfolio, your available capital and all loans available on the market and invests in a sub-set of loans that help you reach your risk-return target fastest. Lower risk loans are always preferred over higher risk loans. In the future the Portfolio Manager will also start selling and buying loans on the Secondary Market. You will then have a single interface for building up or exiting from your portfolio making the experience truly great.

What if I already have loans with Bondora?

Our technology automatically reserves an amount equal to your loan repayments due over the next 60 day period. Therefore you do not have to worry that the Portfolio Manager will use the money you have saved for making repayments.


22 responses to “New dashboard and portfolio manager for our retail investors”

  1. Seriously?
    What about the survey you sent to investors asking if they would like to see these changes implemented?
    After reading several forums and blogs all across the web I cannot imagine that most of us said they wanted to see these changes happen.
    You could share the results of the survey just as a matter of transparency. it wouldn’t surprise me to know that despite most investors being against these changes, bondora still went ahead with it.

    • Hi Hélder,

      I believe you refer to the survey we conducted in February 2015 where we asked how we could improve the Portfolio Manager. The results reflected different opinions and needs, as they usually do – some investors wanted more simplicity and others more complexity. Now there is a new and fully automated Portfolio Manager with a simpler interface and a more flexible API that enables customized investment strategies.

  2. Hi,

    In the post about the recovery process, you left some posts unanswered, including mine ( the 3rd from the top)

    https://www.bondora.com/blog/follow-up-on-the-collection-process-overview-blogpost/

    Please go through all the comments on that post again because there were quite a few people who didn’t get an answer to their questions.

    On a different note, Trustbuddy just went bust. I know they are a different company, and I speak for myself, but I am quite afraid they were the only ones messing with investors money. Is it possible for you to explain here or in a different article how does the FCA supervision works, and what measures are in place to prevent bondora from following the same path.

    Cheers
    Helder

    • Hi again,

      Your concern on the light of TrustBuddy case is very understandable. There’s a number of management practices we have implemented over the years to ensure trust and proper risk management.
      And to answer to your second question about the FCA work methodology. They supervise communication accuracy in different channels as well as check internal processes accordance to the law and we are obliged to submit quarterly/yearly reports to them.

      Thanks for pointing our to unanswered questions, we will check them.

  3. Some of you have asked us about the changes in the commenting here on the blog. You can still ask questions and give us your feedback, all you need to do is just to sign up.
    Recently we had technical issues with it, but now it should be up and running. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

  4. I don’t like the way that bondora is going. Maybe there are a couple of users which will like the new portfolio manager, lots of us don’t.
    I took a glance to API – it doesn’t work and it is poor documented. No effect using parameters on credits search. Using own website with javascript gives cross domain fails. Using an existing account for sandbox playground isn’t professional etc.
    There are a lot of constructive questions and proposals, but bondora doesn’t answer.
    Ok bondora, than go your own way alone. Back in the days there was a good discussion clima with Pärtel himself. Now you are going alone. You did a lot of bad decisions starting in FI and ES and investors lost a lot of money. Who cares – not bondora.
    This it not the win-win situation it was. So – there are other platforms with better risks and we won’t miss bondora. (only missing isepankur)

    • Hi,
      It´s nice to hear that you tested our API and your feedback is noticed. The API is in Beta at the moment and we are working on the development. We have already improved the documentation, added new features and currently working on OAuth authorization and revision of the Sandbox environment solution.
      Our aim is to deliver return to our investors and that means developing and improving our product. Soon to be released API will give you all the flexibility you need to manage your portfolio.

  5. Hello Tatjana,

    You say, “Over the years Bondora has consistently delivered industry leading double digit returns to investors. ”

    But in the previous blog there is one question left unanswered (see below). Could you comment on it, please?
    https://www.bondora.com/blog/gross-profits-earned-by-investors-on-bondora/

    tomakas24
    October 13, 2015 at 12:36
    “I’m trying to analyse the data from the provided source (here: https://goo.gl/yr7gM5),
    yet, there is one thing difficult to understand:
    For example, if we analyse ‘fully matured’ table and take the data for Estonia, which looks the most successful market, we have ‘Issued Amount’ at about 5 mEUR, and then about 1 mEUR of ‘Interest Paid Out’ – so it makes about 20%, but keeping in mind that average term of the loan is about 4 years, so annually we would have only 5% (not even adjusting by overdue). So how is it possible if average interest rate on loans is more than 20%?”

    • Hi Mart,
      Overdue principal on your dashboard means the amount of principal that is overdue according to the repayment schedules. If you have specific questions about your account, please write to [email protected] and we will look into it.

    • Hi Tatjana,
      Are 60+ days overdue (defaulted) loans included in the calculation of the principal? I understand that only loans in arrears but not (yet) defaulted are included, whereas repayment schedules are meaningless for defaulted loans, because the entire principal is being collected at once.

    • Hi Denis,
      Both overdue and 60+ days overdue loans are included in the calculation of the principal.

    • Your own loan agreement stipulates that contractual repayment schedule is no longer valid after the loan has defaulted:
      “11.4. In the event that the overdue amount equals or exceeds the sum of two
      repayments and more than one month has passed from the due date of the second
      repayment and if the Lender has without success granted an additional term of two
      weeks to the Borrower for the payment of unpaid Loan Amount together with
      notification that the Lender shall cancel the Loan Agreement upon failure to pay the
      unpaid amount within the term and the Lender shall claim for payment of the whole
      Loan Amount, the Lender shall have the right to demand immediate payment of the
      entire Loan Amount and the calculated interest.”

      I really want to know what possible rationale can you give for presenting the parameter of overdue principal in such a misleading manner. I can imagine only one: to hide the true impact the defaults are having on investor’s portfolio performance.

  6. Hi again,

    As I understand, bondora plans to close the secondary market and replace it with the API. So, will investors that value simplicity be able to cash out their investments without using the API in the future? Or will they be forced to wait until the loan maturity?

    I was surprised to see the fair value of my account today, it is much higher than I expected. I think that you are overvaluing the defaults, and you should use the average Loss Given Default instead of the sum of the missed payments. But it’s a matter of choice, and I am glad that you made it clear what it means. However for me the new numbers are far from representing the investment at fair value and they are very misleading. Though it is up to us to assess our investments and take what you show us with a grain of salt.

    • Hi Helder,
      We expect that with the API solution there will be third party services that provide a simple and easy to use method to selling and buying loans from the Secondary Market. Additionally, later on the Secondary Market functionality will also be added to Portfolio Manager.

  7. I am disappointed. I really am. It’s hard to phrase the feeling politely.

    With this update Bondora changes itself from a steakhouse to a burger joint with only 3 different meals for those who can’t cut and cook a medium rare filet mignon.

    I am now forced to invest indiscriminately into spanish defaults if I want to attempt to get a higer return. Worse yet – I can’t even choose the Bondora rating category anymore and neither can I lower my risks by investing smaller sums into more loans.

    With the new system my current investment per loan is instantly doubled (and soon tripled) without asking my opinion about it. My dispersion per year is slashed. Years are not the same. It doesn’t matter so much how many total loans I have. Risks need to be well-managed for every year.

    Why is it such a crime to let people choose their own strategy? (moving the slider to position 1/2/3 is not a strategy…)

    Don’t even start with the API talk. I am not a professional programmer and I definitely will not grant a random third party site with bone-chillingly bad security access to my financials. This simply will not happen. Ever.

    Another thing that disgusts me is the way defaults are handled. The investors have to pay for the collection costs and wait for eons to get their money back. All the talk about getting the loans to pay again is rendered uselss if the return payments are decimated by the costs that are taken out of the investors’ pockets and devalued by the time it takes to get the money back.
    Look around. Your competitors offer partial of full buyback guarantees that enable the investors to get most or all of their initial investment back quickly and plow it into new investments. Why not provide an option such as this?

    In the light of all this I have made an unpleasant but necessary decision. I had plans and money to increase my volumes on Bondora significantly based on the knowledge I have from analysing my portfolio and general loan data. Now I am forced to halt these plans until further notice. I have already started allocating the money to more investor-friendly portals that I operate on and am now planning to grow more rapidly there.
    As for Bondora I will invest a smaller fixed sum every month until my returns equal that sum – I will stop adding money once I’ve achieved this situation and let the portfolio to grow / diminish and give no attention to it other than send money to my bank account once in a while.

    Your competitors will probably approve of your changes. They will gain many customers in the coming months :) .

    regards
    a disappointed investor

    P.S. Food for thought: What happens if one or two large venture capital firms decide to back out of your platform and liquidate? How are you planning to fill a several million € gap in available lending money when it happens? Don’t forget what keeps a crowdfunding platform afloat…

    • Hi,
      To strive to soothe your fear over API, I can say that we are currently working on OAuth authorization which gives this tool security. For example Google, Facebook and Twitter all ask for your consent for allowing access to your personal information or posting on your behalf. I do hope that you will regain confidence in us and continue investing. Our aim is to deliver return to our investors and that means developing and improving our product.

    • Hello Tatjana,

      Kuu put all items into corresponding boxes.
      The new Portfolio Manager is useless as it doesn’t let investors to manage their risks and to diversify the loans between different investment categories. It even doesn’t allow me to set the maximal investments amount per loan. It offers us 3 “virtual” settings instead. But these settings are not predictable and not safe.
      I stopped Portfolio Manger and I will have to manage my investments by myself instead of doing it in automatic manner. I have to invest more time into the selection process so I prefer to find another P2P lending platform that will offer me the values you decided to abandon.

      With Best Regards,
      Ilya

    • Hi, Ilya!
      We appreciate you taking the time to share your concerns. We have also acknowledged that product changes may not always serve all our investors, but are important for growth. Today the new Portfolio Manager in an automated investment tool with a simple interface for passive investors and the soon released API will allow active investors have their own customized investment strategies and reporting. I do hope that you will find your fit and continue investing with us.