InSoil Review — ECSP-Licensed Agricultural P2P Platform With EU Climate-Fund Backing

Name: InSoil Review 2026 - Agritech P2P Formerly HeavyFinance
Item: InSoil
Rating: 5.8
Author: CrowdIndex

★★★½☆ Worth Considering | CrowdIndex Score: 6.7 / 10

Lithuanian agritech crowdlending platform, rebranded from HeavyFinance in April 2025, that funds secured agricultural loans across five EU countries. Backed by a €20M European Investment Fund (EIF) cornerstone investment and a €100M Key Carbon partnership, but realized net returns of approximately 4.5% are materially below the 13% headline interest rate due to a high share of the portfolio currently in recovery.

What is InSoil in 60 seconds

InSoil is a Lithuanian crowdlending platform that connects retail investors with farmers across five European countries who need financing for equipment, land, and working capital. You deposit funds, choose loan projects (or use the basic auto-invest tool), and earn monthly interest secured by farmland or heavy machinery — typically with a loan-to-value ratio of 70-90%. It also offers a unique 0% Green Loans product where investor returns come from selling carbon credits generated by farmers adopting regenerative practices. The platform was called HeavyFinance until April 2025, when it rebranded to InSoil. Advertised interest rates sit near 13%, but realized net returns have been materially lower due to slow recovery on defaulted loans.

Strengths

EIF cornerstone investment of €20M plus a €100M Key Carbon partnership. In 2024, the European Investment Fund (EIF — the EU’s institutional investor) committed €20M as the cornerstone of a €50M decarbonization fund deployed through InSoil. In June 2025, the platform signed a €100M deployment partnership with Key Carbon. This level of institutional capital backing is unusual in the EU P2P segment — most competitors operate on VC equity alone, without public-sector validation.
ECSP license under the EU Crowdfunding Regulation (Bank of Lithuania, July 2023). ECSP (European Crowdfunding Service Provider) is the EU’s main regulatory regime for crowdfunding platforms, with passporting across the EEA. The license requires standardized disclosures, prudential capital, and supervision by a national regulator. It does not include investor compensation in the way that MiFID II Investment Firm regulation does — but it is meaningfully stronger than the unregulated or AML-only frameworks that some competitors operate under.
Climate and sustainability angle aligned with EU policy direction. InSoil is the only ECSP-licensed pure-play agricultural crowdlending platform in the Baltics, and it has built a coherent ESG (environmental, social, governance) narrative around regenerative agriculture and soil carbon sequestration. This positioning aligns with EU climate policy and may attract retail investors who want returns connected to environmental impact, not only financial yield.
Tier-1 press coverage in climate-fintech outlets. InSoil has been covered by ImpactAlpha, the European Commission’s Press Corner (via the EIF announcement), AltFi, Silicon Canals, Crowdfund Insider, and Sifted. This is unusual for a P2P platform of this size — most Tier 2 European platforms attract only specialist P2P blog coverage. The climate angle has earned InSoil a meaningfully wider press footprint than its loan volume would otherwise suggest.

Things to Watch

Rebrand from HeavyFinance in April 2025 — investors should review the full HeavyFinance history, not just the InSoil brand. The platform operated as HeavyFinance from its launch in 2020 until April 2025. The legal entity (UAB Heavy Finance) was not renamed, and most of the operating track record — including defaults, recovery delays, and the 2024 spike in delinquencies — happened under the old brand. Some investors reported that the old website (heavyfinance.eu) was migrated to insoil.com without clear advance communication, which is a negative trust signal. When evaluating InSoil, read reviews under both brand names.
Realized net yields of approximately 4.5% are significantly below the 13% advertised range. The platform’s weighted average interest rate is around 13.13%, and the average realized return on loans that have been fully repaid is 15.56%. However, an independent analysis by Jean Galea (2026) estimates that the portfolio-wide net realized return — after accounting for the 18.5% to 24.1% of loans currently in recovery and an average recovery time of approximately 250 days — sits closer to 4.5%. The gap between headline interest rate and what investors actually earn is the most material concern with this platform.
Agricultural sector cyclicality and concentrated exposure to grain price shocks. Farm businesses face weather risk, commodity price volatility, and policy shifts (CAP subsidies, EU climate regulation). The platform’s Polish cohort has been particularly exposed: up to 42% of Polish loans were delayed more than 90 days following grain price drops after the war in Ukraine. Investors should expect repayment delays to cluster around macro events affecting agricultural commodities, not be distributed evenly across the portfolio.
Concentrated borrower type — agritech and farm SMEs only. Unlike multi-product platforms (Mintos, Maclear), InSoil offers only agricultural and agribusiness loans. This is a deliberate niche choice that supports the platform’s climate-fintech positioning, but it concentrates portfolio risk in a single sector. Diversification across borrowers is possible within the platform; diversification across loan types is not. If the European agricultural sector enters a sustained downturn, the entire InSoil portfolio is exposed.

How It Works

Register. Create an account on insoil.com with your email — under two minutes.
Verify your identity (KYC — Know Your Customer, the identity check required by EU anti-money-laundering rules). Upload an ID document and proof of address. KYC is handled by Lemonway, the platform’s licensed payment partner.
Deposit funds. Transfer EUR via SEPA bank transfer. Investor funds are held in segregated virtual accounts at Lemonway (France) or Paysera (Lithuania).
Choose investments. Browse the active project list — each loan shows the borrower country, collateral type (farmland, machinery, or both), loan-to-value ratio, interest rate, and term. Alternatively, configure basic auto-invest with your preferred criteria, or pick Green Loans (0% interest with carbon-credit upside).
Receive repayments. Most loans pay interest periodically with principal repaid at maturity (bullet structure). Terms range from 11 to 48 months. You can reinvest into new loans, withdraw via SEPA, or sell positions on the secondary market (1% fee, limited liquidity).

Who InSoil Is For

InSoil makes sense for EU-based retail investors who want exposure to European agricultural lending with a credible ESG angle, are comfortable with slow recovery timelines on a portion of their portfolio, and are willing to accept realized returns that may be materially lower than headline rates. The €100 minimum per loan makes the platform accessible, but the high recovery share means a properly diversified position requires spreading across many independent loans — typically at least 20-30 loans across multiple countries, which implies a starting portfolio of €2,000-€5,000.

InSoil is not the right fit if you are new to P2P lending and need an investor-compensation safety net (an MiFID II regulated platform like Mintos or Nectaro is a better first step), if you need predictable liquidity (the platform’s secondary market exists but is thinly traded), if you are uncomfortable holding a single-sector portfolio (agricultural loans only), or if you cannot tolerate seeing 18-24% of your portfolio classified as “in recovery” at any given snapshot.

Compared to Alternatives

InSoil vs. Maclear. Maclear is a Swiss-positioned multi-sector P2B platform with advertised yields near 14.9% and a clean default record so far (one default of €150K out of €99.6M+ funded). InSoil is ECSP-regulated (a meaningfully stronger regulatory standard than Maclear’s Swiss SRO AML-only registration), but InSoil’s realized portfolio performance — approximately 4.5% net per independent analysis — is much weaker than what Maclear has delivered to date. If you prioritize regulatory cover and climate-fintech exposure, InSoil has the edge. If you prioritize realized yield and a cleaner operating track record, Maclear is stronger.

InSoil vs. Mintos. Mintos is the largest European P2P platform by lifetime volume and holds a MiFID II Investment Firm license, which includes an investor compensation scheme of up to €20,000 in qualifying scenarios. Mintos is a universal marketplace covering consumer credit, SME, and other loan types — it is not focused on agriculture or climate. For investors who want institutional-grade regulatory cover and a broad loan-type mix, Mintos is the safer choice. For investors who specifically want EU-aligned climate-fintech exposure with EIF backing, InSoil is the only ECSP-licensed pure-play agricultural option.

InSoil vs. Capitalia. Capitalia is a Latvia-based ECSP-licensed SME lending platform that has historically delivered very low default rates (around 0.07% bad debt) on secured business loans, and was the first EU crowdfunding platform to operate under the InvestEU guarantee. Both platforms share ECSP regulation, both lend to small businesses, and both have EU institutional backing. The key difference is performance and concentration: Capitalia has a materially better track record on defaults and recovery, and its loan book is diversified across SME sectors, while InSoil’s portfolio is concentrated in agriculture with 18-24% currently in recovery. If you want a regulated SME exposure with policy alignment and a cleaner operating record, Capitalia is the stronger pick. InSoil’s unique value is the climate-fintech angle and the carbon-credit Green Loans product, which Capitalia does not offer.

Bottom line on competitors. InSoil sits in the regulated-but-underperforming corner of the European P2P market. Its institutional backing (EIF, Key Carbon) and ECSP license are genuinely differentiating, but the gap between advertised and realized returns is the largest issue. Best used as a small thematic allocation within a diversified P2P portfolio, not as a core holding.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why did HeavyFinance rebrand to InSoil? The platform rebranded in April 2025 to reflect its strategic shift toward soil-focused regenerative agriculture and carbon-credit financing. The legal entity (UAB Heavy Finance) was not renamed. Most of the platform’s operating history — including defaults, recoveries, and the 2024 delinquency spike — happened under the HeavyFinance brand and should be considered part of InSoil’s track record.

What is the realistic return I should expect? The advertised weighted average interest rate is approximately 13%. The average realized return on loans that have been fully repaid is 15.56%. However, an independent analysis (Jean Galea, 2026) estimates portfolio-wide net realized return at approximately 4.5% after accounting for delinquencies and slow recovery. Plan for results in this lower range, not the advertised range.

Are loans secured? Yes. Most loans are secured by farmland (up to 90% loan-to-value), heavy machinery and equipment (up to 70% loan-to-value), or both, plus a personal guarantee from the farmer. There is no buyback guarantee from the platform or any loan originator — recovery depends on enforcing the underlying collateral through local legal procedures in each borrower country (LT, LV, PL, PT, BG). Average recovery time is approximately 250 days.

What are Green Loans? Green Loans are 0% interest loans to farmers adopting regenerative practices (no-till, cover cropping, crop rotation). Investor returns come from the sale of carbon credits generated by those practices, split 60% to investors during the loan term plus 40% in the year after principal repayment. As of early 2026, there is limited public evidence of carbon credit distributions actually reaching retail investors at scale — the product remains in a development stage.

Is there an investor compensation scheme? No. ECSP regulation does not include an investor compensation framework. If InSoil were to become insolvent, investors would rank as unsecured creditors against the platform itself. This is a key difference from MiFID II Investment Firm licensed platforms like Mintos, Twino, and Nectaro, which provide up to €20,000 compensation in qualifying scenarios.

Bottom Line

InSoil is a regulated, institutionally-backed European agricultural lending platform with a credible climate-fintech narrative and tier-1 press coverage that few P2P competitors can match. The ECSP license, the €20M EIF cornerstone, and the €100M Key Carbon partnership are genuine assets. But the realized net return of approximately 4.5% — well below the 13% headline interest rate — and the 18-24% of portfolio in recovery mean that investors are not earning what the marketing implies. Worth considering as a small thematic allocation if the climate-fintech angle matters to your portfolio strategy; not recommended as a core P2P holding until the recovery and performance gap narrows.

Affiliate disclosure. CrowdIndex earns a commission when readers sign up to platforms through links on this page. This does not affect our editorial assessment. InSoil’s ranking on CrowdIndex is based on the editorial criteria documented on our Methodology page. We last reviewed this article on May 18, 2026.

InSoil review.