Lendahand review
7.5
(our review)
Dutch crowdfunding platform Lendahand provides financing to entrepreneurs in countries with emerging economies. In our latest review, Lendahand scores a 7.5 out of 10. It makes impact investing really easy, although it should be clear that this is not the platform with the best financial returns.
Please note: investing via crowdfunding involves risks. You may lose (some of) your money.
Content:
What is Lendahand?
Lendahand is a Dutch crowdfunding platform with social objectives. It is active in several countries. It wants to stimulate economic and social impact in countries where small and medium-sized enterprises have little or no access to financing.
These companies create 70 to 95 percent of new jobs. Often, their biggest challenge is gaining access to financing to grow their business and create jobs faster. By funding the crowdfunding campaigns on Lendahand, you can change this.
Your investments enable companies to create more jobs and improve living conditions for people who need it most. In addition to financial returns, you are primarily contributing to the platform’s social and societal objectives.
Investors often compare Lendahand to platforms like Invesdor or Enerfip.
It stimulates economic and social impact in countries where companies have limited access to financing.
Offer: campaigns in emerging economies
On Lendahand, you invest in entrepreneurs in emerging companies. For example, the editors of Investmentplatforms.eu have invested in companies in Ghana, Rwanda, Kenya, Moldova, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and many other countries where entrepreneurs have limited access to financing.
The platform facilitates campaigns in which you can invest from as little as ten euros. It also offers the option to investing in dollars. This means that, in addition to the regular entrepreneurial risk, you also run a currency risk.
Usability
The Lendahand platform is user-friendly. Navigating it is quick and easy. The information provided for each campaign is comprehensive. It includes information about the finances, social figures and more explanations of the campaign. This gives you an idea of what the organization plans to do with your money.
The provided information is fine, although we believe that even more information could be provided. For example, campaigns get a credit score from Lendahand, but it is difficult to assess whether what this score actually represents. For example, for us, it is difficult to form an impression of the creditworthiness of a bakery in Kenya.
It is difficult to assess the creditworthiness of a bakery in Kenya.
In the dashboard, you can find information about your portfolio. There, you can also see how many lives are improving with your investments. This is indicated in numbers. There is no indication of how exactly those lives are getting better. With around 50 investments, our team improved more than 30,000 lives. Yet, it is unclear to us how this was achieved exactly.
Auto Invest function
Lendahand has its own wallet, which makes it possible to reinvest the payouts of your interest into new campaigns. A disadvantage of the platform is that you can only invest via a browser. This can be done on mobile devices, as well as your laptop or desktop. Other platforms often have their own mobile apps, but Lendahand does not.
To us, the Auto Invest function is a great addition. This allows you to automatically invest in new crowdfunding campaigns that meet your preferences. This is also how you can reinvest your interest in new campaigns.
For the Auto Invest function, you can set the desired investment amount, interest rate, credit score, currency and term yourself. The feature also skips campaigns that you have already invested in manually. Based on your filters, the platform gives you an indication of the expected number of campaigns per month in advance.
Returns
Making an impact on sustainable development goals through investing makes up a big part of returns on Lendahand. This is why most people choose to start investing on the platform. We expect that few investors join because of the financial returns, but we are pleasantly surprised by them. We have achieved pretty good financial returns with our investments.
Of course, returns on crowdfunding vary from person to person, depending on their investment portfolio. However, the platform does publish statistics on their average returns. If you had started investing in all loans from the start of the platform until mid-2024, you would have a yield of 3.9 percent per year.
In recent years, that percentage has increased. However, returns vary greatly per investor. You should also know that your return is not shown in the dashboard. The dashboard indicates what you have invested and which repayments you can expect. That means that you can see your returns in absolute numbers. But if you want to know the percentage of returns on your investments, you will need to calculate it yourself. At the time of writing, our returns are around 4 percent.
If you want to know the percentage of returns on your investments, you will need to calculate it yourself.
Reliability and safety
Lendahand has a secure platform, with an experienced team. It has a European Crowdfunding Service Provider (ECSP) license from the Dutch Financial Market Authority (AFM). We consider it a reliable environment for investments.
It also scores well in terms of customer service. We have received clears answers to questions that we sent by email. However, the crowdfunding campaigns are sometimes difficult to assess. It can be hard to form a clear picture of a business in a different country. Collateral also often varies. Think of inventory, or receivable accounts, which can fluctuate greatly during a loan term. With loans in dollars, you also run a currency risk.
Review score: 7.5
In our latest review we rated Lendahand with a 7.5 out of 10. This makes it one of our preferred platforms for sustainable or social crowdfunding investments. In addition to financial returns, it is nice to also make an impact in sustainability or in social areas, as an investor.
The customer service scores excellently. According to us, the platform offered enough of options to invest in. If you do now want to invest too much time, it also has a useful Auto Invest feature that allows you to easily reinvest your repayments and interest. However, we also really enjoyed reading and comparing various pitches ourselves.
The pitches are fine, but we were still missing some information about our impact in the dashboard. Though it is nice to see how many jobs we create or how many lives have been improved by our investments, it remains a bit abstract. We would have liked to see what those improvements consisted of, other than employment.
