Esketit Review - Double-Digit Returns From Lenders Its Own Owners Control

Esketit is a claim-purchase marketplace founded in 2020 by the two men behind Creamfinance (now AvaFin). It has a genuinely clean payment record: no investor capital losses since the first loans in March 2021, and every buyback honoured so far. The problem is what sits underneath. Esketit holds no financial licence in any jurisdiction, publishes no audited accounts of its own, and most of the lending companies on the marketplace are owned by the same two people who own the platform.

What is Esketit in 60 seconds

Esketit is a marketplace where you buy claims on loans that have already been issued by lending companies elsewhere in the world: consumer loans, business loans, car loans, Spanish defaulted-debt portfolios and Latvian mortgages. You are not lending directly. You buy an assignment of a claim, and the lending company promises to buy that claim back from you with accrued interest if the borrower goes more than 60 days past due. That promise is the whole safety net, because there is no regulator, no deposit guarantee and no investor compensation scheme behind it. The complication specific to Esketit is that the founders who own the marketplace also own most of the lending companies making the promise, so the buyback and the entity supervising the buyback point back to the same two people.

Strengths

• Six years of paying investors without a capital loss. Esketit has been issuing claims since March 2021. Both of the reviewers who publish their own audited portfolios on the platform, P2P Empire (investing since April 2022) and re:think P2P (since October 2022), report returns around 11% with no principal losses, and both state that every buyback obligation has been honoured by every lending company to date. The platform reported 100% of its outstanding €49.95M as performing in September 2026, with nothing in recovery. That is a real, dated track record, and it is the single strongest argument for the platform.

• Founders with a genuine operating history in lending. Matiss Ansviesulis and Davis Barons built Creamfinance, later renamed AvaFin, a multi-country consumer lender they eventually sold to Capitec Bank. They have been running non-bank lending businesses since 2012. That experience is the reason the loan book has performed, and it is why re:think P2P still scores Esketit’s track record and portfolio quality highly (25 of 25 for portfolio and investor losses in its risk model) despite scoring it zero on regulation and zero on financial stability.

• Lender-level disclosure that many unlicensed platforms do not bother with. Esketit hosts audited financial statements for several lending companies on its own CDN, including Jet Finance FY2024 audited by Grant Thornton, JMD Investments FY2024 audited by Baker Tilly, and Spanda Capital FY2024 audited by a Spanish firm. Investors can read them before allocating. This is a partial answer to the transparency problem, and it is more than platforms such as Hive5 or Scramble provide.

Things to Watch

• Most of the lending companies are owned by the platform’s owners. This is the central issue with Esketit and it should size any position you take. P2P Empire states that Credus Capital, Mojo Capital, Spanda Capital, MDI Finance and JMD Investments are all owned by Esketit’s founders, which is five of the eight lenders currently listed. re:think P2P independently describes Spanda Capital, Mojo Capital and MDI Finance as companies established by the two shareholders, and reported in April 2026 that the newest lender, Nimbura in Malaysia, is also a shareholder project. The default Diversified auto-invest strategy allocates 20% each to Spanda Capital, Mojo Capital, JMD Investments, mortgage loans and MDI Finance, so an investor using the platform’s own recommended setting puts roughly 80% of their money into founder-linked entities. Esketit does not publish the share of the outstanding portfolio attributable to related parties, so the exact concentration cannot be verified. What can be verified is the structure: the party choosing which claims to list, setting the rates, describing the borrower quality and enforcing the buyback is the same party that benefits from the loans being funded.

• No licence, no supervision, no compensation scheme. Esketit holds neither an ECSP (European Crowdfunding Service Provider) authorisation nor a MiFID II investment-firm licence. re:think P2P scores it 0 out of 15 on regulation and licensing, and P2P Empire lists “not regulated under MiFID II or the ECSP framework” as a headline con. Client funds sit at Verifo, a licensed Lithuanian e-money institution, and the terms say they are segregated from Esketit’s own money, but that segregation is not independently audited. If the platform fails, there is no €20,000 compensation backstop of the kind Nectaro or Mintos investors have.

• The platform publishes no financial statements at all. There is no annual report for Esketit itself, no auditor engaged, no balance sheet and no equity position. Investors cannot tell whether the marketplace that services their claims is profitable or solvent. re:think P2P scores this 0 out of 20. The same gap runs down to the newer lenders: Mojo Capital’s FY2025 disclosure is a two-page unaudited flyer with no balance sheet or cash flow statement, which caused re:think P2P to cut its score for that lender from 32 points to 9 in June 2026, and Nimbura has no audited figures at all.

• Liquidity is operational, not contractual, and that has already been demonstrated. Esketit announced its move from Ireland to Croatia on 6 October 2025, effective 15 October 2025, giving investors about one week. Its own blog post confirms that accounts remaining under the Irish entity keep only “limited functionality”: no primary or secondary market, no top-ups, no auto-purchase and no cash-out. Esketit’s post says withdrawals stay available; P2P Empire and re:think P2P both report that in practice investors under the Irish entity were left locked into existing loans with no early exit until maturity, in some cases for up to two years. Then in late August 2026 P2P Empire reported a second episode: investors holding Spanda Capital and Mojo Capital claims were temporarily unable to withdraw balances their accounts showed as available. Esketit said the funds were being held while Spanda repayments were processed, and P2P Empire recorded the restriction as resolved on 31 August 2026. The lesson from both events is the same: liquidity on Esketit can be switched off by management, without much notice.

• The loan book has been rebuilt with weaker, younger counterparties. AvaFin, which was the strongest and most transparent originator on the marketplace, and Money for Finance have both left. What replaced them are early-stage entities: Nimbura (Malaysia, founded November 2025), Jet Finance (Kazakhstan car loans), MDI Finance (funding vehicle for a Sri Lankan lender, a market P2P Empire classifies as high risk), and Mojo Capital, which lends to other fintech companies connected to the same founders. Spanda Capital is now exiting too, having sold its portfolio to an NPL investor in August 2026, with repayment to investors routed through Mojo Capital as intermediary, which adds a counterparty step that re:think P2P flagged. As of September 2026 P2P Empire scored the remaining lenders 5.5 (JMD), 4.3 (Jet Finance), 2.5 (Mojo, weak), 1.6 (Spanda, weak) and 0.0 (Nimbura, no data).

How It Works

1. Register and pass KYC. You need to be over 18 and hold a bank account in the EU or EEA. Identity verification and bank account (IBAN) verification are required. No suitability test is applied, because Esketit is not an investment firm.
2. Deposit euros. Money is transferred to Esketit’s account at Verifo and shown as your balance. There are no deposit or withdrawal fees.
3. Buy claims, manually or automatically. You can pick individual listings, build a custom auto-purchase strategy by lender, country, term, rate and buyback, or use the pre-set Diversified strategy that splits evenly across five buckets.
4. Collect interest and watch the buyback. Interest accrues on the claims you hold. If the underlying borrower goes 60 days past due, the lending company must repurchase the claim with accrued interest. Since October 2025, repayments first appear as “pending” and become available after Esketit’s weekly settlement cycle.
5. Exit, if the tools are switched on. Accounts on the Croatian entity can sell claims on the secondary market at a premium of up to 2% or a discount of up to 20%, and holders of the pre-set strategies can use instant cash-out, which only works if other investors absorb the positions. Accounts still on the Irish entity have neither.

Who Esketit Is For

Esketit fits an experienced investor who already understands related-party risk, wants double-digit yield, and is willing to hold to maturity rather than count on being able to sell. If you read lender financials yourself, size positions by originator instead of using the default strategy, and treat the platform as a satellite holding rather than a core one, the six-year payment record is worth something. P2P Empire suggests 10% to 25% of a P2P allocation and flags hidden risk as high, which is a reasonable framing.

Esketit is a poor fit for anyone who needs a regulator behind the platform, an investor compensation scheme, audited platform accounts, or dependable access to their money on a known date. It is also a poor fit for a first P2P platform: the thing you most need to evaluate here, the financial health of half a dozen small founder-owned lenders in Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Spain and the UAE, is precisely the thing that is hardest to evaluate from the outside.

Compared to Alternatives

Esketit vs. Maclear. Both are unlicensed in the strict sense: Maclear operates under a Swiss SRO membership that covers anti-money-laundering compliance only, and Esketit has nothing at all. Neither carries an investor compensation scheme. The difference is where the loans come from. Maclear funds independent SME borrowers across Europe against collateral, so the platform and the borrower are separate parties, although Maclear’s recovery process has been criticised for how the Vibroedil default was handled. On Esketit the platform and most of the lending companies share the same two owners, which is a structurally tighter conflict. Maclear also publishes higher headline yields, up to 14.9%, against Esketit’s realistic 11%.

Esketit vs. Mintos. Mintos is the obvious contrast: MiFID II licensed by Latvijas Banka, investor compensation up to €20,000, audited accounts, a decade of history, a working secondary market and dozens of independent originators competing with each other on price. Average Mintos yields of 8% to 11% are lower than Esketit’s 11% or so, and that gap is essentially the price of regulation and of genuine originator diversification. If you cannot articulate why you are accepting founder-owned lenders and no supervision in exchange for one or two extra percentage points, Mintos is the more defensible holding.

Esketit vs. Nectaro. This is the sharpest comparison, because both platforms are built on the same idea: a marketplace created to fund the lending businesses of its own owners. Nectaro is 100% concentrated in Dyninno-owned originators, which is even more concentrated than Esketit. The difference is everything wrapped around that concentration. Nectaro holds a full MiFID II Investment Brokerage Firm licence from Latvijas Banka, is inside the Latvian investor compensation scheme up to €20,000, publishes annual reports audited by BDO under IFRS, and reported a 14.91% realised return for 2025. Esketit has none of the four and returns roughly 11%. On the specific question of related-party risk, Nectaro shows how the same business model looks when a regulator, an auditor and a compensation scheme are attached to it.

Bottom line on competitors. Esketit’s payment record is better than its structure. Every platform it competes with either has a licence and lower yields, or has the same related-party model with regulatory scaffolding on top. Esketit is the version without the scaffolding.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Esketit regulated? No. Esketit holds no ECSP licence and no MiFID II licence, and no financial supervisory authority oversees it in Croatia, Ireland or Latvia. There is no deposit guarantee and no investor compensation scheme. Client money is held at Verifo, a licensed Lithuanian e-money institution, and the terms state it is kept separate from Esketit’s operating funds, but that separation is not independently audited.

Who owns the loan originators? Most of them are owned by the platform’s own founders, Davis Barons and Matiss Ansviesulis. P2P Empire names Credus Capital, Mojo Capital, Spanda Capital, MDI Finance and JMD Investments as founder-owned, five of the eight lenders listed. Esketit does not publish what share of the outstanding portfolio those companies represent, which is why we flag that number as unverified rather than guessing it.

Has anyone lost money on Esketit? No investor capital losses have been reported since the platform started issuing claims in March 2021, and the platform reported 100% of its portfolio as performing in September 2026. This is a payment record, not a guarantee. Every buyback depends on the financial health of a lending company, and several of those companies publish little or nothing.

Can I get my money out early? It depends on which entity your account sits under. Accounts migrated to Esketit Croatia have a secondary market and, for the pre-set strategies, an instant cash-out that only works when other investors buy your positions. Accounts left on the Irish entity lost both in October 2025. In late August 2026 some investors holding Spanda and Mojo claims also found available balances temporarily blocked; P2P Empire reported that restriction resolved on 31 August 2026.

Why did Esketit move from Ireland to Croatia? Esketit’s own explanation, published on 6 October 2025, is operational efficiency and access to more claim purchase opportunities. Reviewers read it as a step toward eventually obtaining an ECSP licence, since Croatia has been quicker to implement the regime than Ireland. Esketit has not published a licence application timetable, so this remains interpretation rather than fact.

Bottom Line

Esketit has paid investors reliably for six years and still reports a fully performing loan book, which is not nothing in this sector. But an investor here is relying entirely on the goodwill and solvency of two individuals who own both the marketplace and most of the companies promising the buybacks, with no regulator, no audited platform accounts and no compensation scheme in between. The October 2025 liquidity freeze and the August 2026 withdrawal episode both showed that access to your money is a management decision rather than a contractual right. If you invest here, do it with a small allocation you can leave alone until maturity, and read each lending company’s financials yourself.

Affiliate disclosure. CrowdIndex earns a commission when readers sign up to platforms through links on this page. This does not affect our editorial assessment. Esketit’s ranking on CrowdIndex is based on the editorial criteria documented on our Methodology page. We last reviewed this article on September 1, 2026.