15000
investors
Trine is a Swedish crowdlending platform, run from Gothenburg since 2015, that lets people across the EEA and Switzerland lend from 25 euros to solar and clean-energy companies in emerging markets - rooftop solar for businesses in Vietnam or Nigeria, electric vehicles in Indonesia, and historically home solar kits across Africa. It pairs each euro with measurable impact: over 3 million people gaining electricity access and 1.4 million tonnes of CO2 avoided, by its own count.
Since 2016 investors have put in 117.7 million euros (much of it recycled repayments) and received 95.7 million back. Trine holds two licences from Sweden's financial regulator - payment institution since 2019 and EU crowdfunding provider since December 2023.
The history matters: unsecured home-solar lending went badly wrong in 2019-2021, with annual credit losses peaking at 9.1% of the portfolio and total losses of 7.7 million euros by end-2024; two more borrowers were written off in December 2025 for 2.84 million euros.
Trine rebuilt around secured lending to commercial solar and e-mobility companies, with equipment or receivables pledged, quarterly monitoring, and - on flagged loans - guarantees from Swedish development agency SIDA (60% of principal) or the US DFC (50%).
No loan issued since 2023 has defaulted, and recent loans pay 8-9%. Across everything since 2015, investors have averaged 5.85% a year after losses. Money is locked to maturity - five to fifteen years on newer loans, with no secondary market - and on the day of research exactly one loan was open to invest in.
License / Regulation: ECSPR provider and payment institution, Finansinspektione
Every loan passes an in-house investment team plus two external investment-committee members, scored on a weighted model Trine publishes: 30% portfolio risk (asset reliability and the creditworthiness of the customers buying the electricity), 30% financial risk (debt service, currency exposure, ability to move money out of the country), 20% operational, 10% sponsor quality, 5% technical, 5% country. Scores map to grades A to C; anything below is never offered to investors. Pricing is built the same way - Trine models the project in local currency, adds a margin for the currency gap, deducts its roughly 3% fee, then splits the rest between your rate and the borrower's buffer. After the 2019-2021 failures it added legal due diligence, customer credit checks, security, and longer terms matched to project cash flows.
Founded in Gothenburg in 2015 by Sam Manaberi, Andreas Lehner, Christoffer Falsen and Christian Genne; Falsen is now CEO and Genne CTO, with the two other founders quietly gone from the team page. The listed team is 18 people across Sweden, Nairobi and Vietnam, including named investment managers and an external investment committee; the registered Swedish company shows just three employees, the rest contracted or abroad. Ownership sits mainly with Stockholm impact investor Gullspang and Chalmers Ventures. The company is small - 2025 revenue of SEK 13.5 million and a SEK 3.2 million loss, equity of SEK 11.9 million - but reported profitable quarters in 2025 with over 1 million euros of cash and no debt.
Borrowers report quarterly, with penalty fees for lateness, and Trine says it monitors for early warning signs and limits new lending to weakening borrowers. Security on modern loans means pledged equipment or receivables - seizable in a way that thousands of scattered household solar kits never were. When payments slip: after 10 business days, notification and late fees at the loan rate plus 2%; then restructuring, which needs approval from over half of investors; then default, acceleration, asset sales and guarantee claims (SIDA 60% of principal, DFC 50%, on covered loans). The honest record: restructuring has kept 28 ecoligo loans paying, but on the two borrowers that actually failed, nothing has been recovered since the December 2025 write-off.
Trine charges investors nothing - no entry, account or withdrawal fees; it takes an arranger fee of 2-4% and a management fee of about 3% a year from the borrower, already deducted before the rate you see. Your real costs sit around the edges: card payments can carry your bank's currency conversion charge (one investor reported 3%), Trustly transfers from Nordic accounts cost 0.25%, and converting repayments back to your home currency happens at your own bank's rate. Synthetic USD loans add euro-dollar swings to every repayment, with no limit. Swedish residents pay 30% tax on interest, reported automatically; returns cannot be sheltered in an ISK account.
Yes, and Trine's own disclosures supply most of it. The 2019-2021 home-solar crisis produced total losses of 7.7 million euros by end-2024, and Trustpilot's one- and two-star reviews from 2020-2024 document it in numbers: an investor with 39,950 euros across 32 projects earning 0.6% a year after six defaults; another losing a third of their investment; complaints that "Trine have a BIG problem in their due diligence", that loans are endlessly prolonged instead of defaulted - which also stops the state guarantees paying out - and that communication fades when projects sour. Since then the tone has turned: Trustpilot stands at 4.8/5 from 178 reviews, the most recent negative review dates from December 2024, and 2025-2026 reviewers report steady 5.7-6.5% outcomes. No regulatory action or organised investor dispute was found, and Trine replies to 100% of negative reviews. Watch item: its largest restructured borrower, ecoligo, scores 1.7/5 with its own investors.
Trine now describes retail crowdfunding as the on-ramp for new, unproven borrowers, while proven ones graduate to institutional money - a 10 million euro institutional commitment took over funding its two best-established borrowers in 2025. Practical consequences: often only one loan open at a time, and the crowd concentrated in the newest names. Also treat the homepage "protected by SIDA" badge carefully - guarantees are loan-specific, limited to 50-60% of principal, exclude interest, and pay only after a recovery process that demonstrably takes years.
