Europe’s largest loan marketplace Mintos just became a licenced investment firm

Mintos has gotten the green light to transform its business into a regulated financial investment marketplace, with the Latvian regulator granting it the required licences.

CEO and co-founder Martins Sulte said the investment firm and electronic money institution licenses: “are not only a cornerstone for us to bring investing in loans mainstream, but will also allow us to offer other investment opportunities (such as ETFs) and financial products and services—all to help retail investors across Europe build wealth long term.”

As a now-regulated marketplace, Mintos will immediately start transitioning its loans into Notes, which will be covered by additional regulatory protections, including national investor compensation schemes.

The shift will only include new offerings on its platform, and will start slowly with only a few Notes at first, with the aim of Mintos offering Notes exclusively by January 2022.

Regarding new investment products, Mintos wrote on its blog that “we look forward to sharing more information on this in the near future.”

The move will expand Mintos into the much larger investment marketplace, especially if it launches ETFs, potentially putting it in competition with marketplaces like Raisin and investment firms like Hargreaves Lansdown.

“Adjusting the business setup and aligning all of the regulatory and licensing requirements has been a unique journey for us and the regulator,” Sulte added. 

“It took us almost two years to get here and I am very pleased to see this come to fruition. The work with the regulator has been very constructive, ensuring that we and those that will follow implement best practices when it comes to the regulated setup and investor protection.”

In June Mintos reported that in 2020 its customer investors had funded some €1.6bn worth of loans, taking its cumulative lending since 2015 to a whopping €5.9bn.

The fintech turned over €10.2m in revenue across the year, raised a €7.2m crowdfund, and made an annual loss of €1.96m.