LANDE Review

LANDE Review Summary

LANDE is a Latvia crowdfunding platform offering investment opportunities in agricultural loans. The loans are secured by either land, crop, or machinery, which decreases the default risk. LANDE pays out, on average 12% interest per year, making it a suitable choice for risk-cautious investors.

We have been investing on LANDE since July 2023 and our experience with the platform has been satisfactory.

LANDE Finance is suitable if you want a higher-yielding investment with a lower risk.

Main takeaways from our LANDE review:

If you are happy to invest in high-yielding secured P2P loans from Latvia, Lithuania or Romania, sign up, invest, and get yourself a 1% bonus from your investments within the first 180 days.

What is LANDE?

LANDE Finance (formerly LendSecured) is a crowdlending platform allowing you to invest in grain-based agricultural loans. Investing in secured loans and earning up to 12% annual interest sounds like a dream.

In this LANDE review, we will dive deeper into various aspects of agricultural loans so you can better evaluate whether LANDE is a good fit for you.

Our Opinion Of LANDE

LANDE does a lot of things right. It provides a dedicated statistics page with performance-oriented data for everyone to review.

The Latvian crowdfunding platform has been outperforming most of its competitors in the Baltics while providing fair terms and high yields for investors. 

Implementing virtual IBAN accounts for its users is also an excellent feature to protect your uninvested funds. That way, you eliminate the risk of embezzlement as your uninvested funds are segregated from the company's funds.

Investing in loans backed by an insured crop provides a good risk and return ratio, which isn't often the case when funding payday loans on other P2P platforms.

LANDE also signs a three-way agreement with the crop buyers to ensure the crop will be sold. 

A downside of LANDE is the usage of stock images representing the currently available projects. The crowdfunding platform could replace the featured images for the listed projects with real photos, making the offers more authentic.

While there is room for improvement, the platform makes a solid impression in the crowdlending space. 

The CEO and his team also made an excellent impression during our visit to LANDE 's office in Latvia. We have been monitoring LANDE's development since 2019.

We are impressed by the features and vast available investment opportunities, especially as many platforms in the industry struggle with cash drag. 

LANDE offers a solid alternative to other platforms, which may help you to decrease cash drag and invest your money at fair interest rates. This is also why we have invested in several projects on LANDE, backed by machinery or land. 

Here is a screenshot from our portfolio on LANDE. The interest is paid monthly, increasing the cash income from our P2P lending portfolio.

What's worth noting is that the number of delayed loans on LANDE has been increasing in recent months. It is, therefore, always recommended that LANDE's portfolio performance be reviewed before investing on the platform. 

LANDE New User Requirements

To invest in agricultural loans, you must have citizenship in one of the European Economic Area (EEA) countries. Another requirement is to have a SEPA bank account.

Further requirements are:

The verification process on LANDE is straightforward and should not take longer than 24 hours.

You must verify your email address, add contact information, and a copy of your ID, but you are also requested to provide a copy of your passport or driving license.

After verifying your account, you can transfer funds to your virtual IBAN account with Lemonway. The transfer of funds takes between one and three business days. 

Risk and Return

Investing in agricultural loans is certainly not risk-free. Typically, those loans are backed by heavy machinery, land, or crops.

While LANDE was earlier focusing on funding mainly grain-backed loans from Latvia, currently, the platform is funding agricultural loans also in Lithuania and Romania.

The loans on LANDE are smaller in size. The loan amount ranges between €4,000 to €60,000, with a loan term of  4 to 36 months and a Loan-to-Value ratio between 14% and 58%. The average LTV (loan-to-value) is at 44%.

When accessing the credit risk of individual loans, LANDE uses internal guidelines that include the following variables:

The creditworthiness of the borrower

Collateral

LANDE is also evaluating various conditions, such as the purpose of the loan, which needs to be relevant to the farming business (working capital or purchase of machines or land).

LANDE provides an appraisal report from an independent evaluation company in cases where the loan is backed by land or real estate. Like on other platforms, those reports are not translated into English.

LANDE also informed us that the platform currently receives 700 to 1000 loan applications per month, of which only 5% to 6% are considered. Those projects are then further evaluated, and if they match LANDE's criteria, they are placed on the platform.

Grain Buyers

Grain buyers play an important role when it comes to the protection of investors' investments. LANDE signs a 3-way agreement with the borrower and the grain buyer, where the amount of sold crop and the price is agreed upon in advance.

Thanks to this 3-way agreement, the grain purchase will be first used to repay the loan before the farmer receives the remaining amount for the harvest sale.

LANDE informs investors that the platform signs those agreements only with reputable grain buyers with a track record of more than five years.

Insurance

In addition to the protection mentioned above, 92% of the crop is insured against storms, hail, or heavy rainfall that could destroy the crop. This further increases the quality of the collateral.

Regarding the return, most loans generate a yearly yield of 11% to 12%, depending on the borrower's credit risk.

Most loans are bullet loans, meaning that the borrower pays out the interest every month but the loan principal at the end of the loan term when the harvest is sold to the crop buyer.

Project Overview

Every project description provides some basic information about the characteristics of the loan, including the loan amount, term, and interest rate.

LANDE will also inform you about the borrower, the loan's purpose, and the collateral's value.

While LANDE doesn't provide specific risk evaluation reports for projects backed by grain, you have access to some of the data they use to estimate the risk and price of the loan.

Usability

LANDE is a relatively easy-to-use platform. You can get a quick overview of your portfolio performance with basic information such as the earned interest and the performance of your portfolio.

Auto Invest

LANDE has also launched Auto Invest, which allows you to automate your investments based on your preferences.

On LANDE, you can use the "basic" auto invest, which allows you to define the minimum investment amount, or use the "advanced" auto invest with slightly more options.

The minimum investment amount on LANDE's advanced auto invest is set to €250. You can define the interest rates, loan term, LTV, and collateral type. The option to automatically invest in loans from specific countries is not available yet.

If you are new to LANDE, manually investing in a few loans is also a good practice to understand how the platform works.

This allows you to review additional information about the borrower, loan terms, and collateral.

The platform uses stock photos for some of its project descriptions, which could be improved to represent the collateral backing the loan.

🧾Does LANDE deduct taxes?

LANDE does not tax your profits in Latvia. When you file your taxes in the country where you are a tax resident, you can download income statements from your dashboard, which you may submit to your tax authorities as required. Go to "Balance" in the menu and download the income statement.