LANDE continues to grow, but growth alone is not what defines a strong lending platform. The true measure of a portfolio is how it performs over time. Over the past five years, we have continuously refined our lending strategy, strengthened our risk assessment process, and focused on building a more resilient portfolio. Here's what our default rate data tells us.
Learning from experience
As every growing lending platform, we have continuously refined our credit strategy based on real portfolio performance. One of the biggest changes came in 2024, when we discontinued higher-risk harvest and livestock loans and shifted our focus almost entirely to loans secured by tangible collateral such as agricultural land and machinery.
Today, around 90% of newly funded loans are backed by land or machinery, providing investors with stronger security and a more resilient portfolio.
Stronger markets through continuous improvement
Each market has followed its own development path.
Latvia, our most mature market, has financed nearly €30 million in loans with an overall historical default rate of 3.6%, despite operating through COVID-19, the energy crisis and the war in Ukraine. Land-backed loans have performed particularly well, with an all-time default rate of just 1.5%.
Lithuania demonstrates how experience translates into results. While the first years required adjustments to our underwriting approach, recent performance has been outstanding. Both land loans issued in 2025 and machinery loans issued during 2025–2026 have recorded 0% defaults, while land-backed loans show an all-time default rate of only 1.1%.
Romania, our newest market, experienced the typical learning curve associated with expansion into a new country. Since then, we have strengthened our risk assessment process, introduced the Mascus machinery valuation database and focused on newer agricultural equipment. Portfolio performance has been improving steadily, while investors continue to receive 1–2 percentage points higher returns to compensate for the additional market risk.
Building a stronger portfolio for the future
Our five years of lending experience confirm a clear trend: loans secured by agricultural land and machinery consistently deliver the strongest results. By continuously refining our credit policy and applying lessons learned across all markets, we are building a portfolio designed to deliver more stable, predictable long-term returns for investors while continuing to support European farmers.