A recent report from Mintos, Europe’s leading marketplace for investing in loans observes a noticeable growth of young investors. In the first half of 2021, the investment platform saw a 9% growth among its young users–from 377,982 the number of young investors increased to over 417,345 individuals.

Over 75% of these investors on the platform are millennials and younger, building up the largest market of investing in loans in Europe to €6.6 billion, currently holding 45% of the European loan investment market.

The trend of increasingly younger investors commenced from the start of 2020 and continued throughout the first two quarters of 2021. In the first months of this year, the age group of 18-24 showed the biggest interest in investing in loans, making them the biggest new investor cohort on Mintos. The distribution of age among those choosing to start investing in alternative assets has evened out, but the average age on the Mintos platform for new sign-ups remains 18-24 years old.

“Mintos was launched back in 2015. Interestingly, if we look back to early 2018–the year the company started its active expansion into the Western European market prior to booming among retail investors in 2019 – we can conclude that the most prevalent age range among our clients, who chose to start investing on Mintos were 30-34, with 35-39 age group following right after,” claims Martin Sulte, the CEO of Mintos.

By the end of 2018, the most popular age group among Mintos investors remained to be 30-34-year-olds, however, 25-29 had caught up as the second most common age range of platform users. As the younger investors paid increasingly more attention and chose to invest in loans, at the very end of 2019 an evident growth of new investors across all three age groups, including the 18-24 age group, was prominent.

“In the first months of 2020 we observed an interesting shift—the investor group in the 35-39 of age range was pushed down from the top 3 new investor groups by the younger investors in the range of 18-24 years old due to the strong influx of their growing interest in alternative assets,” explains Sulte.

Such an increase of new young investors has motivated Mintos to intensify sharing of practical knowledge, investing tips, and educational material—an idea that’s been in the works under the name of “Investors Academy” to be launched on the platform’s web once Mintos becomes a regulated marketplace. Slated to become a dedicated educational resource where investors will be able to access useful knowledge and learn about successful investing, as well as join a community environment where individual input will be shared between investors in order to be able to learn from each others’ experiences.

Until then, the company shares insights on investing over its blog – a compilation of up-to-date resourceful materials on investment goals, diversification efforts, and risk management can be found, providing useful tips for any level of investors experience.