For property deals, Monego requires cleared planning permits, a satisfactory level of pre-sales, a coherent budget and price grid, an experienced operator, and collateral worth at least 1.6 times the cash need. For its rescue-finance deals the test is different: the borrower must have property assets worth more than the loan and be able to place them in a French trust structure, with Monego lending up to 75% of net asset value - there, selection means selecting collateral, not healthy borrowers. A scoring review covers location, sales progress and finances, but no score or grade is shown to investors, and Monego publishes no rejection rate. Lending is concentrated around Lyon, Grenoble and Paris.

Protection rests on the security package rather than on monitoring. Property loans carry first-rank mortgages or pledges; rescue loans use a fiducie-surete, a French trust that parks the borrower's property with an independent trustee so Monego's investors get paid ahead of other creditors. When borrowers stop paying, Monego litigates: 18 projects are currently in court proceedings, and on the seven loans written off it recovered 82% of capital. Two caveats: the mortgage security covers your capital but not your accrued interest, and recovery and legal costs are charged to investors, up to 25 euros per bond. No monitoring schedule, valuation approach or provisioning approach is published.

No scandal, regulator sanction or insolvency was found - the bad news is in Monego's own published numbers. Its July 2026 table shows 44 of 310 projects impaired: five late by under six months, fourteen late by more, eighteen in court proceedings and seven written off, with 17.8 million euros of capital still owed on those. New lending fell from 30.4 million euros in 2022 to 14.3 million in 2024, recovering only partly in 2025, and the operating company swung to a 954,000 euro loss in 2024. The homepage also advertises an average 18-month investment horizon while its own table shows 22 months. We could not read Monego's Trustpilot page - it blocked access - so no score can be quoted; the only rating found is 3.8/5 from just 14 reviews on a French comparison site, whose main gripes concern the Mangopay payment flow rather than Monego itself. Its self-disclosure is genuinely better than most rivals'.

 roughly half of Monego's range is rescue finance for companies in or near insolvency, with property as collateral, so its delay and default statistics should not be compared directly with platforms that only fund healthy developers. Check which entity is your counterparty too - Monego SAS holds the licence, while the affiliated Monego Revolution has filed no accounts. And treat the 0.48% loss headline as the floor, not the summary: 16.7 million euros of capital sits in trouble that number ignores.

The public face is the supervisory board chaired by Arnaud Montebourg, France's former economy minister, alongside Stephan Catoire and Thierry Gardon - though this role appears only on Monego's own site and could not be independently verified. Day to day, the firm is run by founder Yann Balthazard, president since 2015, with Jeremy Pradal as managing director since June 2025, and a team of about ten covering analysis, investor relations and marketing, claiming over 140 years of combined experience in private debt and property finance. The French company registry confirms the executives; the firm employed seven people in 2024. A second entity, Monego Revolution, shares the brand but has filed no accounts.

 Capital is normally repaid in one go at the end; interest comes at the end on short deals or quarterly on longer ones. There is no early exit for you, but the borrower can repay early without penalty after six months. Uninvested cash sits in your own named wallet at Mangopay, separate from Monego's accounts, so it is protected if Monego fails; invested money is at the project's risk. Non-French residents can invest with tax documentation, but everything is in French. Non-professional investors get a four-day cooling-off period.

Nothing directly: Monego states investors pay no fees, and its general terms confirm using the platform is free. It earns 5-8% excluding VAT from borrowers, which is priced into the rates you see. You can still incur costs: recovery and legal costs in a workout, up to 25 euros per bond (2.50 euros for 100-euro bonds); card top-up charges, though bank transfers are free; and the optional PEA-PME wrapper via EasyBourse costs 1.2% of capital up to 150 euros, plus 1.2% on gains and 3 euros a month if inactive, partly refunded by Monego as cashback. Interest is otherwise taxed at the standard French 30% flat tax.