October Review - The Platform Closed to New Investors, Now Moving Its Lenders to EvenFi

You cannot invest with October. The French SME lending platform, founded in 2014 as Lendix, stopped originating new loans in early 2024 and has spent every year since repaying the loans already on its books. Its own homepage states plainly: “October no longer offers financing solutions or new lender accounts.” In September 2026 the remaining lender accounts are being migrated to EvenFi, a Spanish-regulated crowdlending platform. This page exists so that readers who find October in an old comparison table, or who still hold October loans, know exactly where things stand.

What is October in 60 seconds

October was a European crowdlending platform: retail investors lent money directly to small and medium-sized businesses, which repaid capital and interest monthly. It was the largest SME lending platform in continental Europe, and for most of its life it was also one of the most credible, backed by institutional co-investors including the European Investment Fund and Bpifrance, and unusually open with its own default statistics.

That business no longer exists. In February 2024, faced with high interest rates that made the model uneconomic, October sold its lending technology (October Connect) to Sopra Banking Software and stopped originating loans. Since then it has been in run-off: managing repayment and recovery of loans already made, and offering nothing new. In April 2026 the company was acquired by Aether, a French financial services group, which is using October’s team and its AMF permission to build an institutional asset management business rather than to restart retail lending. In September 2026 the remaining lender accounts move to EvenFi. The October brand is being wound down.

Strengths

These describe the historical platform. None of them is a reason to invest today, because you cannot.

• Genuine transparency about its own losses, including on the way out. October published vintage-by-vintage default rates, net internal rate of return, cost of risk, and the delinquency indicators required by the ACPR (the French prudential regulator) for lending platforms. Very few retail platforms publish the numbers that make them look bad. October did, and its migration FAQ continues that habit: it states outstanding balances, the fact that 2022 to 2024 vintages are “still young”, and the fact that recovery costs stay with October rather than being passed on.

• An orderly wind-down rather than a collapse. Since 2024 the outstanding portfolio has fallen from over EUR 300M across 3,500 loans to under EUR 35M. Repayments have continued on schedule, between the 15th and 20th of each month. Client money has remained in segregated LemonWay wallets, and withdrawals to a bank account have stayed free of charge throughout. Recovery on defaulted loans is still run by October’s own team, and October says the associated costs remain with it, with EvenFi only taking over collections once the book falls below 1% of the amount originally lent, which is not expected before early 2028.

• Institutional co-investment alongside retail. October’s model placed institutional money, including the European Investment Fund and Bpifrance, into the same loans as retail lenders on the same terms. That alignment of interests is rare in this sector and was the platform’s most-cited structural strength.

• Scale and depth of track record. Over EUR 1bn deployed across five countries and more than 4,000 projects over a decade, roughly half of it outside France, with loan books running to thousands of individual lines. Whatever happened at the end, October is one of the very few European SME lending platforms with a complete, publicly documented, full-cycle history.

Things to Watch

• You cannot open an account, and this is the only fact that matters for a new investor. October’s own homepage states that it “no longer offers financing solutions or new lender accounts” and that since 2024 all effort has gone into repaying the existing portfolio. Any comparison table, blog post or affiliate page that still lists October as an option you can join is out of date. If you are reading this to decide where to put money, October is not a candidate.

• The realised returns were much weaker than the headline rates suggested. October’s own statistics put the net internal rate of return across all vintages at 3.22%, against a maximum possible 5.93% had every loan repaid as scheduled. The gap, an annual cost of risk of -2.71%, is what defaults took away. Individual vintages fared worse: the 2018 vintage returned 0.99% net, and 2021 returned 2.27%. Note that these figures were last refreshed in early 2024, so the younger vintages had not yet taken their full losses. Our own sibling site card describing October’s historical returns as “roughly 5% to 9%” overstates what lenders actually received.

• Default rates were material and rose in the later years. Across all vintages, 5.53% of capital lent went into default, and 11.75% of projects did. On individual vintages the by-number default rate reached 17.76% and 17.58%. October defines default strictly, as capital more than 180 days overdue or owed by a company in insolvency proceedings, net of recovery, which makes the figures more honest than most and also higher than most.

• Public sentiment among lenders is poor, and got worse after origination stopped. October’s Trustpilot score is 1.5 out of 5 across 972 reviews. Recent reviews cluster on the same complaints: projects defaulting one after another with limited communication, no new projects to reinvest into, and returns far below expectations. One reviewer in November 2025 reported an overall loss of 2.5%; another reported a net yield of 0.35% across 20 projects. These are individual accounts, not audited data, but they are consistent with the platform’s own published cost of risk.

• No liquidity, and none is coming. October never operated a secondary market. Existing lenders cannot sell their positions and must wait for each loan to mature, default or be recovered. The remaining book runs to at least 2028 on October’s own collections timeline.

• The brand and the entity are being repurposed, not revived. Aether acquired October in April 2026 for its team, its data and its AMF permission, and is building an institutional asset management line on top of them. Les Echos reported the acquisition under the framing that the October brand ceases to exist. October says new projects on EvenFi are “the plan”, with no date. Treat that as an aspiration, not a commitment.

What Happens Next If You Are an Existing Lender

Taken from October’s own migration FAQ, published on october.eu:

1. Your account moves to EvenFi during September 2026. October will confirm the exact date by email. Until then the October platform stays operational and you log in as usual.
2. Your loan contracts do not change. October states that the agreements between you and each borrower are not novated, amended or terminated, and that borrowers’ obligations are unchanged. What changes is where you log in.
3. Repayments continue on the same schedule, between the 15th and 20th of each month. The LemonWay payment infrastructure moves across with the accounts, and any repayment falling due mid-transition is distributed by October before the handover.
4. Your balance stays accessible and withdrawals remain free, before and after the migration.
5. You will be re-onboarded by EvenFi for KYC purposes, as EU crowdfunding rules require, though October says valid existing documentation will not need to be resubmitted.
6. Recovery on late and defaulted loans stays with October’s team, with costs borne by October, until the book falls below 1% of the amount originally lent. October does not expect EvenFi to take over collections before early 2028.
7. EvenFi’s terms of use will apply to your account once migration completes, and you should receive them beforehand.
8. Regulatory oversight. October states that EvenFi is supervised by the CNMV in Spain as a Crowdfunding Service Provider and passported across the EU, and that October itself remains subject to AMF oversight until its own crowdfunding authorisation is formally withdrawn.

We have not independently verified how this migration executes in practice. If you hold October loans, read October’s own FAQ and the EvenFi terms when they arrive, and keep your own record of your outstanding positions before the switchover.

Who October Is For

Nobody, as a new investment. The platform is closed and this is not a judgement call, it is October’s own published position.

This card is useful in two situations. First, if you already hold October loans and want a clear summary of the wind-down and the EvenFi migration. Second, if you are comparing active SME lending platforms and want a reference point for what a decade of real, fully disclosed SME lending returns actually looks like: roughly 3.2% net after a 2.7% annual cost of risk, on a book that a serious institutional co-investor was willing to sit in alongside retail. That number is a useful sanity check against platforms advertising double-digit returns on similar credit.

Compared to Alternatives

October versus Mintos. Mintos is the obvious practical answer for anyone who was looking at October: it is open, it is regulated as a MiFID II investment firm by Latvijas Banka, it carries investor compensation of up to EUR 20,000 for platform failure or misappropriation of client funds, and it has a working secondary market, which October never had. Mintos lends against consumer and business loans through many independent originators rather than direct SME loans, so the credit exposure differs, but on the axis that matters most here, availability, there is no contest.

October versus Maclear. Maclear is CrowdIndex’s Editor’s Pick and lends to European SMEs, which makes it the closest thing to a direct successor in product terms. The differences are large. Maclear advertises returns up to 14.9% against October’s realised 3.22%, and operates under Swiss self-regulatory organisation membership covering anti-money-laundering compliance, which is a lighter regulatory frame than October’s AMF authorisation and carries no investor compensation scheme. October’s public disclosure of its own default rates is better than anything Maclear publishes. The honest summary is that October is the better documented platform and Maclear is the available one.

October versus the French crowdlending market it leaves behind. October’s exit was not an isolated event. Lendopolis, Lymo Finance, Lumo and Tylia Invest all had their AMF crowdfunding authorisations withdrawn between December 2025 and June 2026, and Tudigo entered receivership in August 2026. The French segment has consolidated hard. When picking a French platform today, check the AMF white list of authorised crowdfunding service providers and the AMF list of withdrawn authorisations before you deposit anything.

Bottom line on competitors. October’s collapse was not fraud and not mismanagement of client money. It was a business model that worked at low interest rates and stopped working at high ones, wound down in an orderly way with unusually good disclosure. The lesson for choosing between active platforms is that SME lending at a realistic net return of roughly 3% could not sustain the platform economics, which is worth remembering when a live platform advertises three or four times that figure on comparable credit.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I still invest with October in 2026? No. October’s own website states that it no longer offers financing solutions or new lender accounts, and that since 2024 all effort has gone into repaying the existing portfolio. There is no way to open an account or fund a project.

Why did October stop lending? The model depended on low interest rates. When rates rose sharply, it became difficult to originate enough loans at viable pricing to reach break-even. In February 2024 October sold its technology, October Connect, to Sopra Banking Software and put the lending business into run-off.

What happens to my existing loans? They continue. Repayments are paid between the 15th and 20th of each month. Your accounts are being migrated to EvenFi during September 2026, but October states that the loan agreements themselves are unaffected: not novated, not amended, not terminated. Recovery on late and defaulted loans stays with October’s team until the book falls below 1% of the amount originally lent, which is not expected before early 2028.

Who is EvenFi? According to October, EvenFi is a European crowdlending platform founded in 2020, regulated in Spain by the CNMV as a Crowdfunding Service Provider and passported across the EU, managing loans for over 80,000 lenders. We have not independently reviewed EvenFi and this card is not an assessment of it.

Did October have a buyback guarantee? No. If a borrower defaulted, recovery depended on October’s collections team working the case. There was no automatic repurchase and no guarantee of full repayment.

What did October lenders actually earn? By October’s own published statistics, 3.22% net internal rate of return across all vintages, against a theoretical maximum of 5.93% had every loan repaid as scheduled. The difference was lost to defaults. Individual vintages ranged from 0.99% to 8.44%, and the figures date from early 2024, before the youngest vintages had taken their full losses.

Can I get my money out now? You can withdraw whatever cash balance sits in your account, free of charge, before and after the migration. You cannot sell your outstanding loans, because October never had a secondary market. Those funds return only as borrowers repay.

Bottom Line

October was, for a decade, the most credible SME lending platform in continental Europe, and it published more honest data about its own performance than almost anyone in the sector. That data is also its epitaph: 3.22% net after a 2.71% annual cost of risk was not enough to sustain the business once interest rates rose. Origination stopped in early 2024, the technology went to Sopra Banking Software, the company went to Aether in April 2026, and the remaining lender accounts move to EvenFi in September 2026.

If you already hold October loans, the wind-down has been handled properly so far and your job is to read the migration FAQ and keep your own record of your positions. If you are choosing where to invest today, October is not on the list, and its realised returns are a useful benchmark to hold up against any live platform promising far more on the same kind of credit.

Affiliate disclosure. CrowdIndex earns a commission when readers sign up to some platforms through links on this page. October is not an affiliate partner of CrowdIndex and there is no commercial link on this page, because October does not accept new investors. October’s placement on CrowdIndex is based on the editorial criteria documented on our Methodology page. Capital at risk.