Bondora timeline of changes and returns

There have been a large amount of changes at Bondora over time and I bet no-one really remembers all of them and when they happened. Of course, knowing most of them won’t give you any actionable value (although might be cool to know anyway), but some of it is relevant when doing your analyses on the Bondora datasets.

I have tried to pull together all the information about the major/more important changes and updates that have happened at Bondora since the beginning of 2013 (did not find any important announcements from my inbox prior to this) to give you a good timeline of what happened and when.

Also, I have additionally put together the return numbers highlighted in the newsletters to better illustrate how things have changed over time. I seem to have deleted/lost some of the newsletters so not everything is included here.

Please note that this list might not be entirely accurate nor is it a full list of all relevant and important changes. In addition, most of the dates are based on when these things were announced in the newsletters/e-mails not the dates when the changes were implemented. In other words, the dates of actual changes may often be a little bit different than those mentioned here.

If you know anything more accurately, want to add something to the list or correct any mistakes here, put it down into the comments section and I’ll make the improvement as soon as I get to your comment.

Bondora Statistics Based on Newsletter

(Unfortunately Bondora has stopped providing this data in the newsletter.)

I will update these statistics regularly if there’s enough demand for this. If I haven’t updated for a while, add a comment below and remind me by requesting an update.

I excluded Slovakian statistics as they don’t yet show any meaningful default rate.

Bondora updates and changes timeline

 23rd Feb 2009 – 21st Apr 2010

• Loan verification methods was similar to current “Income unverified”.

22nd Apr 2010 – 23rd Sep 2010

• Loan verification method: “Self-assessment, cross-referenced by phone”.

24th Sep 2010 – 31st Jan 2011

• Loan verification method: “Income verified”

1st Feb 2011 – …

• Loan verification method: “Income and expenses verified”

15th Feb 2013

• Portfolio Manager queue created. Only one PM makes a bid and those who have waited longer, get priority.
• Investment limit of 20% of applied amount or 500 €, whichever is lower, per investor per application added.
• A limited number of Preferred Investors who will be providing liquidity to market announced.

25th Feb 2013

• Received an e-mail from Pärtel with my income report for 2012. I had earned 569€ interest payments and 94€ of late charges with an annualized return of 19% (yeah, yeah, it’s not a system update, but still an important milestone!).

5th Mar 2013

• Maximum loan duration from now on is 60 months.
• Maximum loan amount increased to 10,000 €.
• Credit Groups A, B and C created.
• More strict underwriting processes added to young borrowers. Additional criteria added about DTI (debt-to-income ratio) and income.

22nd Mar 2013

• Secondary Market launched (thanks goes to Wiseclerk for giving correct date).

15th May 2013

• Max DTI now 59%.

17th Jul 2013

• Users now log in with their e-mail instead of username. New customers will get a randomized username.

30th Jul 2013

• Finnish borrower market added.

17th Oct 2013

• Spanish market opened.

17th Dec 2013

• Co-operation with Creditreform for debt collection process announced.
• Loans funded at least 75% will be considered as funded.
• Loan repayments schedule moved from 18:30 to 3:00.
• isePankur OÜ became isePankur AS.

23rd Dec 2013

• Receive a bonus for investing into lower interest loans before the end of the year.

15th Jan 2014

• Market page received DTI and income filters.
• Loan status “Charged off” added.
• “Overdue” added to My investments page filters.
• Market hidden from unregistered users.
• Automatic notifications feature (iseTeavitaja) for new applications removed.

22nd Jan 2014

• CSV export format income report with more data added.

12th Feb 2014

• Data Export loan dataset published.

17th Feb 2014

• Slovakian market opened.

20th Feb 2014

• Market opened for young professionals with stable income (below 25).
• Max loan amounts in B and C group for Finnish borrowers increased to reflect higher local incomes.
• DTI removed as a criteria in credit decision.
• DTI filter in Portfolio Managers changed to include either all applications or those with below 59% DTI.
• Milestones: 10 million EUR loans issued and 1 million EUR interests paid to investors.

5th Mar 2014

• New income report with additional data fields added to cover investor’s needs from different markets.
• Companies are restricted to invest into markets where local law restricts it.

20th Mar 2014

• Debt collection process moved back to in-house.

26th Mar 2014

• TransferWise withdrawals possible again.

2nd Apr 2014

• isePankur rebranded as Bondora.
• New investment product Bondora+ launched.

10th Apr 2014

• Bondora site updated to prevent any potential damage from Heartbleed bug.

24th Apr 2014

• Bondora mobile app pre-release beta test announced.

30th Apr 2014

• Fixed loan pricing introduced.

7th May 2014

• Bondora is now regulated by the FCA in UK.

8th May 2014

• Timed funding applications removed.
• Updates to Portfolio Manager queue – interest rate of PM doesn’t affect position in the queue.

12th May 2014

• Changes to loan pricing.
• Criteria of 10x net income to max loan amount added.

29th May 2014

• Bondora+ opened for Slovakian borrowers.

18th Jun 2014

• Custom loan purpose field removed from loan applications.
• Cash flow page is not generated daily, instead of instantly. Some improvements made to the reporting logic.

19th Jun 2014

• Some loan prices increased and standard loan price unified accross all markets to 26%.
• Only credit score 1000 applications now approved in Spain and Slovakia.

2nd Jul 2014

• ID documents and proof of address now required from borrowers.
• Data verification method filter added to Portfolio Managers to allow investing into Bondora+ loans.

10th Jul 2014

• Loan applications’ phone verification removed.
• 30% provision requirement added for all loan applications (min. 250 € EST/SVK, 350 € ESP, 500 € FIN) to avoid over-indebtness.

24th Jul 2014

• Milestones: 20 million EUR issued loans and 2.6 million EUR interests paid to investors.
• Possible mark-up discount range on Secondary Market widened to -99%…+40%.
• More proactive approach to soft collection announced.

26th Aug 2014

• Additional AML requirements added to investor accounts (proof of address and copy of ID).
• New security features added which lead to some loan applications being cancelled after getting funding.

10th Sep 2014

• Additional datasets released and columns added to loan dataset.
• Standard interests lowered and requirements increased for Slovakian loans after change or local laws. Only Income and expenses verified and Income verified A1000 applicants approved.

24th Sept 2014

• Bondora receives 2 awards at the AltFi Awards conference in UK:
  • The P2P Consumer Platform of the Year (EU);
  • The Alternative Finance Platform of the Year (EU).
• Updates to Portfolio Managers – batch investing.
• Automated cancellations of loans that have received no funding in last 36 hours.
• Now possible to set Portfolio Managers to invest any amount between 10 € and 500 € that is divisible by 5.
• “Data verified” filter added to My investments page.
• New personal data export datasets Beta version launched.

1st Oct 2014

• Bondora now fully compliant with FCA requirements.
• Additional personal dataset added and improvements to existing ones made.

8th Oct 2014

• Filter added to Secondary Market to find or exclude rescheduled loans.

13th-30th Nov 2014

• No purchase commission on the Secondary Market.

19th Nov 2014

• The interest rate offered by default to EST A1000 Income & Expenses verified changed to 15%.
• The interest rate offered by default to FIN A1000 Income & Expenses verified changed to 19%.

10th Dec 2014

• Bondora Rating added to live system.

Additional updates about to be announced…

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Have any questions about investing at Bondora?