Recently I read on several blogs reviews of Fast Invest. Most of them are quite positive and don’t mention any possible issues with the company trust and transparency or the lack of it. A month ago, I received an offer to promote Fast Invest on my P2P blog vivainvest.eu. It was quite generous compared to other platforms I’m promoting on my blog. It was an official offer from a reputable provider, but since I have some very serious concerns about Fast Invest, I decided not to promote it the way that most bloggers do. I decided to write a very different kind of review to share my experience using Fast Invest for 6 month as well as concerns I have about the platform.
Using Fast Invest for 6 months
I joined Fast Invest 6 months ago – in June 2018. At first glance, I was very impressed by the platform quality and favorable investment terms. The platform’s user experience is really great and the website is very professionally designed and implemented. After digging deeper, I started to wonder if they are for real. When something looks too good to be true, usually it’s just not real. I decided to make 100 euro deposit to try if this is not just another investment scam. Everything went smoothly and I increased my investment to 500 euro.
The platform is really well-built and works very smoothly. The user interface is a charm – well designed and highly responsive. It’s really easy to set up auto-investing strategy. Using Fast Invest is a smooth and nice experience, but I was worried to make a real investment. The return rates of up to 15% were very attractive, so I didn’t want to miss this opportunity and I decided to ask some key questions.
Asking questions about Fast Invest
A few day after investment, I write to Fast Invest support the following:
Hello,
Congratulations on you excellent website and hard to believe favorable investment terms. I can’t find information or reviews on your company and platform, thus I hesitate to invest more at the moment. What is worrying me is the lack of transparency I have some questions to clarify:
1. I can’t find the list of loan originators for different countries. It is nice to have for the sake of transparency.
2. I can’t find information on who is responsible for the default guarantee. Is it Fast Invest or the loan originator? If it is the loan originator, it is important to name it. If it is Fast Invest it needs some explanation how it is done (provision fund and its size, insurance (what is covered and naming insurer)?
3. I can’t find information on who is responsible for the immediate buyback. Is it from the originator or Fast Invest? What measures are taken to ensure liquidity, if it is Fast Invest?
Hope to get some detailed answers to the above questions, since they are important for serious investors. Making this information available on your website will be even better. I really like your approach and your offering is really tempting, but just making a statement when the company is not well recognized simply does’t cut it.
Best regards,
Stoycho
Getting answers from Fast Invest
The support was fast and responsive. Just a few hours later I get this reply:
Hello Mr. Stoycho,
Thank you for your letter. FAST INVEST is a young company that’s why it is more difficult to find reviews and other information. You can read some reviews about FAST INVEST here https://www.trustpilot.com/review/fastinvest.com.
Below I provide answers based on your questions:
- Currently, FAST INVEST does not provide the information about the loan originators. It is because of our terms and agreements with loan originators. However, FAST INVEST will provide information about the partners in the near future.
- It is our promise to our customers that we will buyback all the defaulted loans if any. Firstly, pays FAST INVEST but the loan originators are obligated to repay the defaulted amount to FAST INVEST. To protect our customers and ourselves from huge defaulted loans number, we choose very carefully our partners that provide loans. Our partners assure that they lend to creditable persons who are able to pay principal on time. Moreover, FAST INVEST has signed the agreements with loan originators which protect the investments from the big amounts of the default money. FAST INVEST as a company also keeps reserve money for such cases.
- BuyBack guarantee is also provided by FAST INVEST. However, FAST INVEST has special agreements with loan originators due to this situation.
Best regards,
Sara Colle
Fast Invest Support team
I don’t really like the answers and decided not to invest some serious money. It looks like I just have to accept their word that being a „young company that’s why it is more difficult to find reviews and other information“, they can promise something no one in P2P lending industry does. They „choose very carefully our partners that provide loans“, but they just not want to disclose them. The whole explanation sounds phony to me. So I decided not to invest additional money.
Is Fast Invest a scam?
I can’t say that. I don’t know. I don’t really care. I would not give my money to investment platform with big promises and zero transparency. There is simply no way to evaluate their ability to keep the promises they make. Fast Invest just looks very suspicious to me. Here are my main concerns:
Originators, buyback and sell back are just promises
Fast Invest don’t disclose who are their originators, nor how exactly buyback guarantee works. They told me that they provide it, but „have special arrangements with originators“, which they don’t disclose. I am unable to evaluate their financials and their ability to provide buyback guarantee.
They claim that will buy back all loans you invested in, but there aren’t any details. I have no idea if there is a reserve fund and how big it is to handle bigger volume of sell back requests. They just made a promise and decline to comment on details. They are actually a small company without proven track record and financial resources making very big promises.
Closed for UK investors
In the beginning of November they quietly stop to accept UK investors. The answer to the investors complaining on TrustPilot looks phony to me. See for yourself:
Their answers simply don’t make sense. Fast Invest claims to be an UK company and listing UK loans in GBP. One nice feature is that you can make currency exchange inside the platform. You can exchange GBP to EUR and vice versa. By the way I still have some in my portfolio:
Clever young woman as CEO
They have brilliant CEO. Ms Simona Vaitkune appointed as company director when she was just 18 years old. Wow! Apparently it’s very clever young woman. Kudos! Here is the information from Company House:
No real physical office address
There is something even more interesting in the screenshot above. The company’s address! The Company House files shows they have just moved to very nice new address in a fancy building in City of London. The new address is not updated on the website yet, but it should be soon, since it is very prestigious location for a fast growing company. It just happened to be probably a virtual office. You can see it here. Very prestigious and probably very virtual is also their office in Milan. You can check it here.
They changed their address several times from one virtual office building to another for the last couple of years. They claim to be an UK company, but actually the team is probably in Lithuania or maybe in Poland. No one knows for sure. One blogger said he visited them on Lithuania – still no details on this. It is quite suspicious, since there is no information for an office in Lithuania on the website.
ICO to become digital bank
Icing on the cake is their ICO without any real plan, besides claims to become digital bank. There aren’t any details. Just some very general marketing messages about becoming „Investment Bank for a crypto community“ whatever this is supposed to mean.
I have withdrawn all my money from Fast Invest
Last week I withdrew my initial 500 euro deposit from the platform. Everything was nice and smooth. Getting SMS to confirm withdrawal is another platform feature I really like. I received my money back in a couple of days. I kept my 13 euro profit there, so I can continue to monitor the platform progress.
Conclusion
My personal decision is to stay away from Fast Invest. Lots of red flags there! I’m not fully convinced that Fast Invest is actually a scam or Ponzi scheme, but in my opinion they are as close as it gets. I am not willing to invest my money in a small company with unknown physical location and zero transparency. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I am too harsh to them and their intentions are as good as the platform user experience. Maybe I’m missing a very good opportunity. But it is my money and I’m not willing to take that risk.
I just decided to be honest and write the things the way I really feel them, not as expected to do. Caveat emptor! Thank you!
I would like to hear your opinion and discuss Fast Invest and other P2P platforms available for European investors in my Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/P2PLendingEurope/. You guys are very welcome!