Kairi joined Bondora five years ago when there were fewer than ten people in the company. Starting as an assistant, Kairi has worked across several departments within Bondora and—as a result—knows the business inside and out. She’s now leading our Associate’s team and strives to give first-class customer service to all of our investors.
1. When do I need to pay taxes?
We briefly covered the topic in our October’s blog post, but it’s about time to go over it as it’s this time of the year again – Tax season*. In general, the profits earned through Bondora are taxed based on the gross interest received, every year. According to Estonian law, Bondora does not withhold the income tax. The profits earned through Bondora are taxed based upon the gross income received, but it depends on the residency of the investor. This means that all our investors need to declare incomes to their local tax authority themselves if needed, per the local law. Bondora cannot provide tax, financial, or legal advice and recommends that you consult your financial or tax adviser if you need to learn if, how, and when you need to report your various income sources.
To make tax reporting easier for our investors, we have prepared a PDF Tax Report with the necessary information included. The report can be found on the Reports page on your Bondora account.
2. Recent updates for Go & Grow are really nice, and the interface is so much better – keep up the good work! Do you have plans to improve other products as well?
We’re so glad to hear that so many people like the new version of the beloved Go & Grow. Over the past few months, we’ve been working on this, collecting and shortlisting all the ideas which resulted in the version 2 release. Soon, we’ll release another update to improve the user experience for all who are using multiple products – and there will be more bonus surprises – so, stay tuned!
Overall, we are always very happy to receive feedback and suggestions – all investors are welcome to share their ideas on how to make our services better to use – and as we’ve said before, no matter how “ahead-of-the-times” you think your suggestion is, we’d like to hear it! Submit your ideas directly to the Bondora team via the Feature request tool, in the upper right section of your account. We will review all submissions, and they’ll be visible for the whole Bondora investor community to see and vote for.
3. I would like to know if there are any statistics about the Go & Grow portfolio?
Yes – we have recently introduced the Go & Grow portfolio overview series to give you more insight and information about the developments, on a regular basis. The quarterly overview of Go & Grow portfolio explains how it exactly works and gives a granular overview of the status – for example, how it’s composed and the investments distributed, i.e. between countries and ratings. The latest overview (2nd in the series) can be found from here.
4. How do you calculate the risk category of a loan or a borrower?
For this, we use a proprietary credit modeling system which brings together 1,000’s of unique data points to determine how likely it is that a borrower will default on their loan. Traditional data from credit bureaus, population registries, and employment are of course taken in to account, but we also use non-traditional methods like social media and how they use our site.
Each borrower is given a credit rating ranging from AA – HR (low to high risk), so we can then match this with our investors chosen risk strategy. More information about our Risk scoring.
5. Is Bondora a profitable company and where can I find its financial statements?
Bondora had its first profitable financial year in 2017, which gives our customers a lot of confidence in the future of the platform.
Our annual reports are usually ready to publish by midsummer – we do not prepare it quarterly. We only publish the annual report when it is all ready and audited. The newest report for 2018 will be published on our Support page and blog. You can download the Bondora annual reports for 2016 and 2017 here.
Annual report for 2015 is available here:
In case you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us—our team is more than happy to assist you in any way. You can email us at [email protected] or (during business hours, Mo-Fr: 9–17 EET) reach us by phone at +44 1568 6300 06
*The tax season is the period within which all taxes must be filed up until the deadline, usually period between January 1 and April 15 (Investopedia)