Episode 093 – P2P Lending For Small Businesses | Martins From Debitum Network

24. March 2020 Giacomo Comments 0 Comment

Today Mathias interviews Martins Liberts – the co-founder of Debitum Network, a P2P lending platform focused on loans for small and medium-sized businesses.

We talk about:

background of Martins and the team

scoring mechanisms
technical implementation of the platform
the business model of loan originators

how p2p media coverage will evolve
knowing when to step back as a founder
new CEO Sergei Demchuk

Cheers to Evoestate – the real estate P2P aggregator – who sponsored the episode 🙏

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Debitum and Martins

Debitum is a P2B lending headquartered in Riga, Latvia which offers loans to small and medium-sized companies. We talk about the background of Martins, who grew up in Lithuania and who always worked in technology-focused companies. He studied Business Economics in Riga and made his Master in Management Information Systems in Latvia. Before founding Debitum Network he worked at Debifo. He is also director of the company inntec.

Debitum Network currently employs 15 full-time employees and got a proper office in the middle of Riga.

Risk and Return

When selecting loans, Debitum Network offers guidance for investors by letting them filter the credit score of the borrower ranging from A+ to F utilising third party scoring provider in each country. They also score the loan originators with an internal model in order to measure the risk. We also talk specifically about how triple dragon loans from the UK and Cardec Factoring loans work.

Currently loans ranging from 7% to 9.5% are offered. We also discuss if the interest rates will change in the future and why it’s better to invest with Debitum Network instead of just investing in a broad ETFs portfolio.

Blogs & Media Coverage

As there is currently some tumult in the p2p lending community due to the insolvency of the earlier competitors Envestio Kuetzal we talk about how the media coverage could evolve in the future. In the beginning, some 5-10 years ago, there were the nerds, then p2p lending went hype chasing for highest performance. More and more normal people came and invested with P2P. Things didn’t work out for them partially. Suddenly everything was “scam”. A new generation of P2P blogger are trying to generate clicks and subscribers with negative headlines on a daily basis but also providing the missing critical perspective. They were doing more due diligence on platforms collectively. In the interview, we discuss what this landscape will look like in a year from now and compare it to the media coverage of the stock market.

Compliance

Debitum Network will acquire a licence from the authorities soon under which it can be regulated in the future. Martins has not disclosed which one but they are not registering as a European Crowdfunding Service Provider advocated by the EU.

New CEO

Every founder has to know where he can contribute most and what his/her are strengths are. In order to beef up the operational excellence and scaling of the company, Martins decided to onboard Sergei Demchuk as they already knew each other when Sergei was working for the loan originator Mikro Kapital Rumania. Listen to the episode to get more insides on what is upcoming for the company and where they want to head to in the next years.

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