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investors
LANDE is a Latvian crowdlending platform that finances small and medium-sized farms in Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Poland with money from retail investors across the EU.
From 50 euros you fund a share of a specific farm loan - seasonal crop funding, machinery purchase or farmland purchase - for 4 to 36 months at advertised rates around 11 to 14 percent, with interest paid monthly. Every loan is secured: farmland by a registered first-rank mortgage with a certified appraisal, machinery by a pledge, and grain by an agreement routing the crop buyer's payment to the loan, plus a personal guarantee from the farmer in all cases.
Lending is conservative on paper - loans average 41 percent of the collateral's value against a 60 percent ceiling - and LANDE puts its own money into 5 percent of every loan while approving fewer than one application in ten.
The platform launched in 2019 as LendSecured, holds an EU crowdfunding licence from the Bank of Latvia granted in February 2024 and passported across the EU, and in October 2025 the European Investment Fund signed a 10.4 million euro guarantee supporting its small farm loans.
It has funded about 64 million euros across 2,327 loans, of which 1,249 are fully repaid, and reports 11,212 registered investors.
Uninvested money sits in a segregated account at BNP Paribas operated by the French payment institution Lemon Way, though no deposit guarantee applies. Investing is currently free, including the secondary market.
There is no buyback guarantee - the collateral is the protection - and no tax is withheld, so investors declare interest themselves.
License / Regulation: ECSPR crowdfunding provider, Latvijas Banka | Licence 27-10/2024/23 |
A farmer applies and LANDE's analysts assess both the farm and the collateral: financial statements, harvest history and EU subsidy entitlements on the borrower side, and for land a certified third-party appraisal in English attached to the project. Loans are capped at 60 percent of collateral value and average 41 percent, every borrower signs a personal guarantee, and the platform funds 5 percent of each loan itself while approving under 6 percent of applications. The weak spots are documented too: small farms often lack proper accounting, and past sales incentives that favoured volume produced the disastrous 2023 Romanian machinery loans, of which 30.5 percent defaulted.
There is a consistent pattern of operational complaints, though no fraud allegation, no regulatory action and no reported loss of investor capital. Trustpilot scores it 3.4 out of 5 from 47 reviews (August 2026) - weak for the sector. The repeated themes: bank-account re-verification blocking withdrawals (the most damaging complaint), repayments running months late - consistent with the platform's own figures showing about a quarter of the book behind schedule - recoveries taking around two years with investors left uninformed, and support tickets waiting up to a month. Independent reviewers add that past sales incentives favoured volume over quality and that rapid growth strained its systems until mid-2024. On the positive side of the ledger: the regulator's register shows no sanctions, the company is profitable and audited, and no investor has yet reported losing capital.
Chief executive Nikita Goncars founded the platform (as LendSecured) in 2019, chairs the board and owns 78.67 percent - significant key-person risk, as he was the sole board member until April 2025. The named team includes a chief legal officer, chief operations officer, country managers for Lithuania and Poland, and a head of debt collection. The company averaged just ten employees in 2025 while servicing a 34.7 million euro book across four countries, which helps explain recurring complaints about slow support. It is audited, and turned a 206,000 euro profit on 2.36 million euros of revenue in 2025.
Secured by agricultural collateral means four different things here. Enforced land mortgages have returned 84 percent; livestock 68 percent; EU subsidy claims 54 percent; machinery 44 percent; and grain agreements just 39 percent. The platform stopped writing the worst types in 2024 and new lending is nearly all land- and machinery-backed, so today's book is materially safer than the 2022-2023 one - but a quarter of the current book is still grain-secured legacy. The platform was called LendSecured before the rebrand, so older reviews sit under that name.
LANDE services loans in-house, publishes monthly performance reports and posts an update on every defaulted loan every 30 days. On default, its recovery team negotiates first; failing that, the pledged property is sold at auction, and nothing is written off until a bailiff certifies no assets remain - recoveries have taken from one day to over three years. The platform also acted structurally: after livestock and harvest loans showed the worst late payments, it stopped writing them in 2024, and nearly all new lending is now backed by land or machinery. The legacy remains, though - about 26 percent of the current book is still grain-secured - and no crop insurance is required.
Investing is currently free end to end: no fees to register, deposit, invest, sell on the secondary market or withdraw - unusually generous, as Baltic rivals typically charge to sell. Two things to watch: the FAQ says withdrawals are free currently, and a new fee for accounts inactive for twelve months starts on 5 October 2026, with the amount not yet published. The platform is euro-only, so non-euro investors pay their own bank's conversion. No tax is withheld: you receive an annual statement and declare interest income yourself.
