Raize Review - Portugal’s Oldest SME Lender, and One of Europe’s Most Honest Default Reports

Raize is the first crowdfunding platform ever registered with Portugal’s securities regulator, and after eleven years it is still originating. It financed EUR 19.0M of new loans in 2025 and holds EUR 28.1M of Portuguese small-business debt on behalf of investors. What sets it apart is not the return, which is modest, but the disclosure: Raize publishes a yearly loan performance report that breaks defaults down by risk band, separates a genuine final-loss line from mere delinquency, gives three years of history, adds a quarterly view, and states a forward-looking estimate. Almost nobody else in this index does all five. The trade-off is that Raize takes 10% to 12% of your gross interest before Portuguese tax takes another 28%.

What is Raize in 60 seconds

Raize connects Portuguese retail investors with Portuguese small companies that need money. A company applies, Raize underwrites it and assigns one of six risk bands, and the loan goes on the marketplace. You lend from EUR 20 per loan, either picking deals yourself, or letting the Tracker spread your balance automatically, or buying somebody else’s existing position on the Cessoes market. The borrower repays capital and interest monthly by direct debit through Raize’s own payment institution, and Raize deducts Portuguese withholding tax before the interest reaches you, so there is nothing to declare at year end. There is no buyback and no protection fund: if a borrower stops paying, Raize runs the collection process, using personal guarantees from the company’s directors where they exist, and whatever is not recovered is your loss.

Strengths

• The default disclosure is genuinely best in class. Article 20 of Regulation (EU) 2020/1503, together with Delegated Regulation (EU) 2022/2115, obliges an authorised crowdfunding platform to publish its default rates. Most platforms in this index publish the bare minimum, and several publish a single flattering percentage with no definition attached. Raize publishes an annual PDF that (1) defines default precisely as more than 90 days past due or an enforcement proceeding, (2) breaks the rate down across all six risk bands, (3) reports it both by volume and by number of loans, (4) gives three consecutive years, (5) adds a separate quarterly table, (6) keeps a distinct “incobravel” line for money actually written off as opposed to merely late, and (7) states a forward-looking expected default rate per band derived from the trailing 36 months. That last item is a requirement most platforms treat as optional. The document also names the legal entity, its company number and its registered address on every page.

• Eleven years of continuous origination, and it is accelerating. Raize was the first entity registered with the CMVM as a crowdfunding platform manager, in May 2018, and the reporting series runs back to 2015. It has financed EUR 116.2M across 4,425 operations. Critically for anyone worried about the wave of European platforms quietly winding down, the 2025 numbers are not a run-off pattern: new origination rose from EUR 12.0M to EUR 19.0M, up 59% year on year, and the outstanding book grew from EUR 23.7M to EUR 28.1M. The number of new loans fell from 372 to 219 because the average ticket more than doubled, from EUR 32,000 to EUR 75,000, which is a deliberate shift up-market rather than a shortage of deals.

• Tax is handled for you, which is rare and worth real money. Raize deducts the 28% Portuguese withholding tax at source as the interest is paid, and that deduction is final. A Portuguese-resident investor has no year-end declaration to file on the interest and no foreign-platform paperwork of the kind that makes Mintos or Maclear positions tedious. You may still opt to aggregate the income with the rest of your IRS if your marginal rate is below 28%. Note the one exception Raize states plainly: gains made by selling positions on the Cessoes market are not withheld and do have to be declared.

• The regulatory stack is unusually thick for a small platform. Two supervised entities sit behind the product. Raizecrowd holds the crowdfunding authorisation from the CMVM, and the client money sits with Raize - Instituicao de Pagamentos, S.A., a payment institution authorised and supervised by Banco de Portugal under number 8711. The parent is listed on Euronext Access Lisbon, so it publishes audited accounts and files market announcements. The ECSPR machinery is visibly implemented on the investor side too: a knowledge test, a loss-bearing-capacity simulation, the sophisticated versus non-sophisticated classification, and a four-working-day reflection period during which any primary-market offer can be pulled without penalty.

• A new publicly guaranteed product opened in June 2026. Raize and its largest shareholder Flexdeal were selected to structure and place the first grouped SME bond issues in Portugal to carry a Banco Portugues de Fomento guarantee. The programme is EUR 100M, split into a EUR 50M line for SMEs rated 1 to 4 and a EUR 50M tourism line rated 1 to 6, with a public guarantee covering up to 80% of outstanding capital, a EUR 2M cap per company and maturities up to seven years. Raize states that this is the first time Portuguese retail investors can take part in publicly guaranteed grouped bond issues. Read the caveat in Things to Watch before treating this as a safe asset.

Things to Watch

• The fee is charged on your interest, not on your capital, and it is large. Raize’s published price list for retail investors sets the cost of the account at 10% of gross monthly interest received on the INVEST plan, and 12% on the ACCESS plan. Only the START plan, which by definition means an empty account with no loans, is free. This matters because it stacks with tax on the same base. CrowdIndex arithmetic: out of every EUR 100 of gross interest, 28 goes to withholding tax and 10 to 12 goes to Raize, leaving roughly EUR 60 to 62 before any credit losses at all. Applied to the 7.02% average coupon on 2025 originations, that is on the order of 4.2% to 4.4% before losses. The platform’s own headline of 5.90% per year “after losses” does not state whether it is before or after commission and tax, which is exactly why we flag our own calculation as ours. Some third-party Portuguese sources have circulated a “roughly 3.7% net” figure; we could not reproduce it from primary documents and we do not adopt it. Be aware that a “free account” claim appears on Raize’s own general FAQ and in some sister-site material, and that claim refers to account opening and maintenance, not to the commission on interest.

• The 2025 default rate looks spectacular partly because the book is young. CrowdIndex arithmetic on the platform’s own tables: aggregating across all risk bands by volume gives 1.55% in 2023, 3.60% in 2024 and 0.17% in 2025, with final write-offs of 0.44%, 0.23% and 0.00% respectively. By number of loans the same aggregation gives 1.65%, 5.07% and 0.74%. The 2025 collapse is real in the sense that the money is genuinely not in default today, but EUR 19.0M of the EUR 28.1M outstanding, roughly 68% of the book, was originated during 2025 itself, and a loan cannot be more than 90 days past due if it is four months old. Raize’s own forward estimate is the more sober number to plan around: 0.94% for band A rising to 5.08% for band C+. Note also that the 2025 by-number table uses a denominator identical to the fourth-quarter base rather than a full-year opening base, which flatters the ratio.

• Related-party governance sits at the top of the company. Alberto Amaral is CEO of Raize and also CEO of Flexdeal, which is Raize’s largest shareholder (33.10% as at February 2024, increased again in March 2026 by an amount we did not retrieve). The BPF grouped-bond programme is run by Raize and Flexdeal together. This is not the originator-owns-the-platform structure that plagues Nectaro or Loanch, and Raize does lend to genuinely independent Portuguese companies, so a blanket “no related parties” verdict of the kind our Portuguese sister sites gave is too generous. Separately, the founders José Maria Rego and António da Silva Marques resigned in February 2024 after Flexdeal took control, the company placed a liability action against both on the agenda of its 2025 annual meeting, and then withdrew that item in March 2025 after the two provided further information. No conclusion should be drawn about anyone’s conduct from that sequence, but it belongs in the record.

• The operator is small and only just profitable. The listed entity reported FY2025 revenue of EUR 1.49M, up 16%, and net income of EUR 22,400, its first profit after a loss in FY2024. In February and March 2026 it announced and approved a EUR 1.5M capital increase, issuing 1,785,714 shares at EUR 0.84 by private placement, subject to non-objection from Banco de Portugal, on top of an investment line of up to EUR 4M from C2 Capital Partners agreed in 2025 to fund expansion into Spain, Italy and Luxembourg. Growth capital is a good sign. A EUR 22,400 net result on a EUR 28M loan book being serviced is a thin cushion, and investors should read the two facts together rather than separately.

• Liquidity exists but is priced, and exit can cost you capital. The Cessoes market is a real secondary market, unlike several platforms in this index that have none. But Raize publishes the discount grid it applies, and it is unforgiving: a fully performing loan can be sold at 0%, but one with a recent late payment sells at -9%, one more than 45 days late at -42%, and one already in recovery at -82%. Restructured loans start at -7% and reach -82%. Raize states in its own documents that selling at a discount means realising a capital loss of that amount, and that no transaction happens at all unless another investor wants to buy.

How It Works

1. Open an account and pass the gates. Register on raize.pt, complete KYC identity verification, sit the ECSPR knowledge test, and run the loss-bearing-capacity simulation. Raize states it does not store the financial inputs to that simulation, only the result. By default you are classified as a non-sophisticated investor with the fuller set of protections.
2. Fund the payment account. Transfer euros by bank transfer to your account at Raize - Instituicao de Pagamentos. Remember that this balance is not covered by the Portuguese Deposit Guarantee Fund; Raize says so explicitly.
3. Choose how you invest. Pick loans manually on the primary market, switch on the Tracker to spread the balance automatically across new deals, or buy existing positions from other investors on the Cessoes market. Minimum EUR 20 per loan. A four-working-day reflection period applies to primary-market offers and to Tracker activation, and changing Tracker settings restarts the clock.
4. Collect monthly. Borrowers pay capital and interest monthly by direct debit. Raize deducts its commission and the 28% withholding tax, and credits the rest. Late-payment interest, when recovered, is paid out at the end of the loan rather than as it accrues.
5. Exit, or wait. Sell on the Cessoes market at the published discount for the loan’s payment status, or simply hold to maturity. Loans written in 2025 averaged 43 months, so holding to maturity is a multi-year commitment.

Who Raize Is For

Raize suits a Portuguese-resident investor who wants exposure to domestic small-business credit inside the domestic tax system, and who values reporting quality over headline yield. If you have ever tried to reconcile a foreign P2P platform’s annual statement against an IRS form, the value of automatic final withholding is obvious. The EUR 20 minimum makes it easy to start, but the arithmetic argues for building a position of at least a few thousand euros spread across many loans and several risk bands, because with no buyback the only defence against a single default is the interest from everything else in the portfolio.

Raize is a poor fit if you are chasing double-digit returns, because after commission and tax the realistic figure is in the low-to-mid single digits. It is also a poor fit if you are not Portuguese-resident, since the whole tax advantage disappears and the site is Portuguese-only. And it is the wrong platform if you want geographic diversification: every borrower is a Portuguese company, so the whole book moves with one national economy.

Compared to Alternatives

Raize vs. Maclear. These two are opposites on both axes we care about. Maclear advertises up to 14.9% and operates from Switzerland under a self-regulatory organisation membership that covers anti-money-laundering compliance only, which is not securities supervision and carries no investor compensation. Raize advertises far less, roughly 6% gross before its own commission, but sits under a full EU crowdfunding authorisation from a national securities regulator, with a supervised payment institution holding the client money and a listed parent publishing audited accounts. On loss reporting, Raize is the stronger of the two by a distance: it publishes banded, dated, three-year default and write-off tables, while Maclear’s collateral recovery process has not been demonstrated at that level of granularity. If your question is “how much can I earn”, Maclear wins on paper. If your question is “can I check what actually happened to the money”, Raize wins.

Raize vs. Mintos. Mintos is the scale benchmark, MiFID II regulated in Latvia with investor compensation up to EUR 20,000, a deep secondary market, dozens of independent loan originators and exposure across many countries. Raize has none of that breadth: one country, one originator, no compensation scheme, and a secondary market that only works if another Raize investor happens to want your loan. What Raize offers instead is directness and tax simplicity. On Mintos you lend to a lending company that lends to a borrower, and you handle your own Portuguese tax return; on Raize you lend to the named Portuguese company and the tax is already settled. A reasonable Portuguese portfolio might hold Mintos for diversification and Raize as the domestic, tax-simple sleeve.

Raize vs. BienPreter. This comparison exists to make one point about disclosure. Both platforms hold a genuine ECSPR authorisation from a national regulator, French in BienPreter’s case. BienPreter reports a 0.00% default rate across eight years, a figure our review of that platform found does not reconcile with a borrower in liquidation. Raize, over the same regime and the same obligation, reports rates that move: 3.60% by volume in 2024 by our arithmetic, dropping to 0.17% in 2025, with the risk bands behaving as risk bands should, C+ worse than A in every single year. A platform that publishes numbers that vary, deteriorate and recover is telling you something a platform reporting a permanent zero is not. Raize also earns roughly half of what BienPreter advertises, which is what an honest report of this credit quality tends to look like.

Raize vs. October. October is the cautionary version of the same business. Founded in 2014 as Lendix, it lent more than EUR 1bn to European SMEs, stopped originating in early 2024 and is now migrating its remaining lenders to another platform. Its published default rate before it stopped was 5.53% by volume across all vintages. Raize is the same product, in one small country, at a fraction of the scale, and it is still writing new business at an accelerating rate with fresh capital behind it. That is the useful contrast for anyone assuming a long track record automatically means a durable one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Raize still accepting new investments in 2026? Yes. Raize originated EUR 19.0M of new loans during 2025, up 59% on 2024, and its outstanding book grew to EUR 28.1M across 1,287 loans. In June 2026 it launched a new product line of grouped SME bond issues carrying a Banco Portugues de Fomento guarantee, and in March 2026 shareholders approved a EUR 1.5M capital increase to fund expansion. None of that is consistent with a wind-down.

How much does Raize actually cost me? Opening and maintaining the account is free, but the account plan itself is priced as a percentage of the interest you receive: 10% on the INVEST plan for investors who lend regularly, 12% on the ACCESS plan for occasional investors. Selling a position on the secondary market costs 1% of the amount sold on ACCESS and is included on INVEST. On top of that, 28% Portuguese withholding tax is deducted from the interest at source.

What is Raize’s default rate? Raize publishes it every year under Article 20 of Regulation (EU) 2020/1503, broken down by its six risk bands, by volume and by loan count, with three years of history and a separate line for money actually written off. Aggregating the platform’s 2025 volume figures ourselves gives 0.17% in default and 0.00% written off; the same arithmetic on 2024 gives 3.60% and 0.23%. Raize’s own forward-looking estimate for the next period ranges from 0.94% for band A to 5.08% for band C+.

Is my money protected if a borrower does not pay? No. There is no buyback, no protection fund and no investor compensation scheme, and Raize states explicitly that balances in its payment account are not covered by the Portuguese Deposit Guarantee Fund. What exists instead is a documented recovery process: formal notice by registered letter, a single joint action on behalf of all investors in that loan, personal guarantees from company directors where they were taken, and the PER and PERSI restructuring procedures under Portuguese insolvency law. Recovery costs are charged to the borrower, not to you.

Can I sell before the loan matures? Yes, through the Cessoes market, but at the discount Raize publishes for that loan’s status. A performing loan can go at par; one more than 45 days late goes at -42%; one in recovery at -82%. Raize also warns that a sale only happens if another investor wants to buy, so liquidity is not guaranteed at any price.

Bottom Line

Raize is the most transparent loss reporter in this index and one of its least exciting earners, and those two facts are related. Eleven years of continuous origination, a real EU crowdfunding authorisation, a supervised payment institution holding the cash, a listed parent, and an annual default report that names its definitions and shows the bad years as well as the good ones add up to a genuinely trustworthy operation. Then the 10% to 12% commission on interest and the 28% withholding take roughly 40% of the gross coupon before a single borrower misses a payment. Treat Raize as the domestic, low-drama, tax-simple base layer of a Portuguese crowdlending portfolio, size it for a mid-single-digit net return rather than the headline, and do not read the 2025 default numbers without reading the platform’s own forward estimate next to them.

Affiliate disclosure. CrowdIndex earns a commission when readers sign up to platforms through links on this site. This does not affect our editorial assessment. Raize’s ranking on CrowdIndex is based on the editorial criteria documented on our Methodology page. We last reviewed this article on September 2, 2026.