ClubFunding Review - A Real AMF Licence Around a Book That Has Stopped Repaying on Time

French real-estate crowdfunding platform, live since May 2015, with EUR 1.9bn lent to property developers across 1,469 bond issues. It holds a full Crowdfunding Service Provider authorisation from the AMF, the French markets regulator, passported into 25 EU member states, and it publishes a project-by-project status table that is more granular than almost anything else in European crowdlending. That table is also the problem. On its own 31 August 2026 figures, only about 22% of the money still outstanding is running on the schedule investors originally signed up to.

What is ClubFunding in 60 seconds

ClubFunding lets you lend money to French property developers. You buy a bond, which is a formal IOU: the developer promises to pay your capital back plus a fixed rate of interest on a set date, usually somewhere between one and three years out. Nothing is paid in the meantime. The money funds a building or renovation programme, and repayment depends on that programme selling or refinancing. Rates on recent vintages are around 12.5% a year. Your capital is not guaranteed and there is no way to sell your position early, so once you commit, you are in until the developer pays or until the situation is resolved some other way. ClubFunding is one of the two or three largest players in this market in France and it publishes an unusually detailed breakdown of how its live projects are performing, which is what makes it possible to say something concrete about the risk rather than repeating a marketing number.

Strengths

• A genuine, full-fat EU crowdfunding licence from a serious regulator. ClubFunding holds authorisation FP-2023-40, granted by the AMF on 24 November 2023 under Regulation (EU) 2020/1503, covering placing without firm commitment and the reception and transmission of client orders, in shares and bonds. It is passported into 25 member states. The AMF is a full national markets regulator, not a self-regulatory body, and the platform appears on the AMF white list with no sanction on file at either the platform or the holding company. Client money is not held by ClubFunding itself: it acts as a payment services agent of Treezor, a licensed electronic money institution.

• Eleven years of trading and real scale. EUR 1,924.5M financed across 1,469 bond issues since May 2015, of which 850 have been repaid in full and EUR 1,039M of capital returned. That is a long enough record to cover the 2015 to 2021 boom and the 2022 to 2026 French property downturn, which is more than most platforms in this segment can say. Two French competitors, Koregraf and WeShareBonds, stopped trading in 2025 and WiSEED went through court-supervised restructuring in late 2025.

• Transparency that is genuinely better than the sector standard. ClubFunding publishes a full status table by vintage year, splitting the live book into healthy, rescheduled, nought-to-six months late, over six months late, amicable procedure, court insolvency procedure and definitive loss, in both project counts and euros. Most platforms publish a single flattering headline. This one publishes the numbers that let an outsider disagree with its headline, which is a real point in its favour even though the numbers are uncomfortable.

• Institutional capital behind the operator. In September 2022 the group raised EUR 125M in a leveraged buyout backed by Florac Investissements, Peninsula Capital, EMZ Partners and Bpifrance Investissement, the French state investment bank. The parent, CF Group Holding, carries share capital of EUR 116.09M. That does not protect any individual loan, but it makes an abrupt operator failure less likely than at a bootstrapped platform.

Things to Watch

• About 78% of the outstanding book is no longer on its original schedule. Of the EUR 885.4M still due at 31 August 2026, only EUR 194.4M sits in the healthy bucket. The rest breaks down as EUR 218.9M on modified repayment schedules (24.7%), EUR 101.4M nought to six months late (11.5%), EUR 51.7M more than six months late (5.8%), EUR 200M in amicable workout procedures (22.6%) and EUR 119M in court insolvency proceedings (13.4%). By project count, 89 of the 619 live projects are in formal insolvency proceedings and another 92 are in amicable procedures. These percentages are our arithmetic on ClubFunding’s own absolute figures, because the platform publishes the euros but not the ratios.

• The near-zero loss figure is a timing artefact, not a recovery record. ClubFunding has recognised exactly one definitive capital loss since 2015, EUR 0.17M on a 2018 project, and every vintage from 2019 onward shows zero. That sits alongside EUR 119M in court proceedings. Losses in this market are recognised only at the very end of a workout, which can take years, so a loss line of nought while a ninth of the book is in front of a judge tells you about accounting sequence, not about outcomes. The AMF made exactly this point in its October 2024 study of French property crowdfunding, quoting platform marketing lines such as “0% capital loss” as a problem.

• The 9.95% return in the marketing is calculated on survivors only, and mixes in another business. The platform’s own footnote is explicit: the figure is an average IRR “calculated on alternative financings fully settled since 2015, as at 30/04/2026, made through the crowdfunding provider (real-estate debt) and/or the funds managed by Clubfunding Asset Management”. Deals that defaulted or are still stuck are excluded by construction, and the number blends the regulated platform with the group’s asset-management funds. It is not the realised return on all money lent through the platform.

• No liquidity, a high ticket, and one sector in one country. There is no secondary market: the word does not appear anywhere in the terms and conditions. The entry ticket is around EUR 1,000 per project, so a properly spread position across ten or more developers needs EUR 10,000 to EUR 20,000, against EUR 10 per loan on Baltic platforms. And every euro is exposed to the same thing, French property development, at a point when the sector-wide barometer published by Forvis Mazars for France FinTech in March 2026 reported 25% to 30% of financed nominal more than six months late and 20% to 25% in insolvency proceedings, and summarised the market as “one project in two currently shows significant difficulties”.

How It Works

1. Open an account and pass identity checks. Register on the platform and complete KYC (Know Your Customer, the identity verification every regulated financial firm must run), plus the suitability questions that Regulation (EU) 2020/1503 requires for non-sophisticated investors.
2. Browse the live bond offers. Each project page sets out the developer, the amount sought, the target rate, the term and the security taken. ClubFunding does not publish a standardised list of security types; the framework is described qualitatively, and second-ranking security behind a bank makes the position closer to mezzanine debt.
3. Subscribe from around EUR 1,000, paid by direct debit. Collections are fast: the platform advertises an average raise time of one hour, which means popular deals are gone the same day they open.
4. Wait. Bonds are repaid in fine, meaning capital and interest arrive together at maturity, typically 12 to 36 months out. There is no interim income and no way to exit early.
5. Follow the status. If the developer cannot pay on time, the project moves through the published buckets: rescheduled, late, amicable procedure, then court proceedings. ClubFunding acts as representative of the bondholders and litigates against defaulting developers and their personal guarantors on investors’ behalf, a role confirmed by the French Cour de cassation in a ruling of 6 May 2026.

Who ClubFunding Is For

ClubFunding suits an investor who already understands French property development risk, has enough capital to spread EUR 1,000 tickets across at least ten or fifteen separate developers, and can genuinely leave that money untouched for three years or more, since a large share of current projects are running well past their original maturity. Someone who wants a regulated European venue with a long record, granular reporting and double-digit headline coupons will find few better-documented options in France. The reporting quality is the real reason to pick it: you can see what you are buying.

It is a poor fit for anyone starting small, anyone who might need the money back on a known date, and anyone who wants diversification. Every position is the same bet on the same national property cycle. It is also a poor fit for investors who assume the coupon is the return. On this platform, a material part of the book is currently deciding whether it will repay at all, and the accounting will not tell you the answer for several more years.

Compared to Alternatives

ClubFunding vs. Maclear. These two are close on advertised yield and far apart on everything else. Maclear operates under Swiss self-regulatory body membership, which covers anti-money-laundering compliance and nothing else, with no investor compensation scheme and a collateral recovery process that has not been operationally tested. ClubFunding sits under a full AMF authorisation with EU-wide passporting, quarterly-grade public reporting and eleven years of history. Maclear lends across several European countries and sectors; ClubFunding is entirely French property. The honest split: Maclear wins on diversification of underlying borrowers and on the low entry ticket, ClubFunding wins decisively on regulatory standing and on the quality of what it discloses. Neither offers investor compensation if the platform itself fails.

ClubFunding vs. Mintos. Mintos is the scale benchmark, licensed as an investment firm under MiFID II in Latvia, which brings investor compensation up to EUR 20,000 if the platform mishandles client assets, a working secondary market and a EUR 50 minimum. ClubFunding’s ECSPR licence carries no equivalent compensation scheme, no secondary market and a ticket twenty times larger. Where ClubFunding is ahead is asset transparency: you know the individual developer, the individual building and the individual court file. On Mintos you buy exposure to a loan originator’s book. If you want liquidity and a low barrier, Mintos. If you want to see the actual asset behind your money and accept locking it up, ClubFunding.

ClubFunding vs. EstateGuru. This is the closest comparison, because both are property lenders that hit the same downturn. EstateGuru’s book deteriorated to the point where roughly 60% of its portfolio was in recovery and its public sentiment scores collapsed. ClubFunding’s stress is real but the shape is different: a much larger share of its projects have actually completed and repaid (850 of 1,469), its regulator is a top-tier national markets authority rather than an ECSP licence from a small supervisor, and its litigation record shows it actively pursuing developers and their guarantors in court rather than passively accruing recovery cases. Both should be treated as cyclical, illiquid bets on construction. ClubFunding is the better-run of the two on current evidence, which is a low bar and should be read as such.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does ClubFunding publish about defaults? Not a default rate. It publishes absolute figures by status: at 31 August 2026, out of EUR 885.4M outstanding, EUR 194.4M was healthy, EUR 218.9M on modified schedules, EUR 153.1M late, EUR 200M in amicable procedures and EUR 119M in court proceedings, with EUR 0.17M of definitive loss recognised since 2015. The table follows the French trade body code of conduct, which the platform states on the page itself. We could not locate a separate annual default-rate disclosure in the format prescribed by Delegated Regulation (EU) 2022/2119.

Is the 9.95% figure the return I should expect? No. It is an average IRR on deals that were fully settled, as at 30 April 2026, and it also blends in funds managed by the group’s asset-management arm. Deals that are late, in workout or in court do not appear in it. The weighted average contractual coupon on the platform’s own table is 10.57% since 2015 and 12.50% on 2025 loans, but a contractual coupon is a promise, not a result.

What is the minimum investment? The homepage advertises investing “from EUR 1,000”. We confirmed EUR 1,000 on the equity offers; the real-estate bond project pages require an account, so we could not read the figure at source. Other products in the group have different minimums, EUR 200 for the SCPI and EUR 2,500 for the tax-relief product, so do not assume one number covers everything.

Can I get my money out early? No. There is no secondary market. Your capital is committed until the developer repays, and on current numbers a significant share of projects run past their original maturity.

Who owns ClubFunding and are its accounts public? The platform, Clubfunding SAS, sits under CF Group Holding, controlled by president David Peronnin, with Florac Investissements, Peninsula Capital, EMZ Partners and Bpifrance Investissement in the capital following a EUR 125M raise in September 2022. Neither the platform nor the holding files public accounts, which French companies may lawfully request. Revenue and profitability are therefore not verifiable from the registry.

Bottom Line

ClubFunding is the most transparent platform in a stressed market, and the transparency is what should give you pause. The licence is real, the regulator is serious, the track record is long and the operator is well capitalised. But on the platform’s own August 2026 figures, roughly a fifth of the live book is running to its original terms, a third is in amicable or court proceedings, and the loss line still reads almost zero because French property workouts take years to conclude. That is not a scandal, it is the French real-estate crowdfunding cycle showing up honestly in the reporting. Treat it as a small, patient, high-risk sleeve for money you will not need back on a date, not as an income product.

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