Maclear has recorded one default in its lending history: the €150,000 loan to Vibroedil S.R.L., an Italian company, funded in three €50,000 tranches. Vibroedil entered liquidation proceedings in Italy on 22 July 2025, and within about two and a half months, we recovered 100% of the loan's principal through a private settlement with Vibroedil’s owner (though the company did go through formal insolvency proceedings in court). All Maclear investors who held positions in Vibroedil received all of their principal funds back.
In this article, we'll walk through what happened to the loan and how Maclear recovered it. We'll also cover what the Provision Fund did and didn't cover in this case, and show you exactly how to check these claims yourself directly on Maclear's platform.
How did Maclear recover the Vibroedil loan?
Our approach to a missed or delayed loan repayment follows a defined sequence, published in our FAQ:
- Contact the borrower on day 3 of a missed payment.
- Send a formal notice on day 30.
- Take further recovery action on day 60 if the loan still hasn't been repaid.
- Activate Reverse Assignment on day 90 if the loan is still unresolved, consolidating investors' claims and distributing any recoveries proportionally.
This sequence is our general policy for any loan that starts missing payments. In the specific case of Vibroedil default, however, we achieved a negotiated settlement, which was a far more preferable outcome to a bankruptcy-court distribution.
What happened in the Vibroedil default?
Vibroedil S.R.L., an Italian company based in the province of Ancona that sold construction materials, borrowed €150,000 from Maclear investors, structured as three separate €50,000 stages, each backed by collateral pledged to the loan.
Structuring it that way meant investors were exposed to Vibroedil in three smaller tranches rather than one large position, and that we could stop releasing further funding stages as soon as a problem appeared. Eventually the LTV on the actually issued loan came up to just 2.5%, which influenced our chosen recovery method through a personal settlement.
On 22 July 2025, an Italian court declared Vibroedil "in liquidazione giudiziale". Under this formal judicial liquidation status, a company unable to meet its obligations is placed under a supervised process to wind down its activity.
By law, from that point onwards, only a liquidator appointed by the court had the power to dispose of the company’s assets. However, apart from the collateral obligations from Vibroedil the company, Maclear also held personal guarantees from its owner, who could still dispose of his assets. After a series of negotiations, these guarantees allowed us to receive repayment of the principal and distribute it to investors. These delicate negotiations took several weeks, thus the delay in communicating the default proceedings to the Maclear investors.
Someone may ask why, instead of moving through the collateral recovery process described in our FAQ, we chose to recover Vibroedil's principal in full through a private settlement negotiated directly with the owner. By Italian law, asset liquidation proceedings can go on for a very long time, so we chose the personal settlement option as it was clearly in our investors’ interests. The fact that Maclear recovered investors’ funds in such a short time is evidence of our robust risk management policy.
Timeline of the Vibroedil default and recovery, from the court declaration to full principal recovery.| Date | Event |
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| 22 July 2025 | Vibroedil S.R.L. is declared "in liquidazione giudiziale" by an Italian court |
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| ~9 September 2025 | Maclear notifies investors about the default |
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| 18 September 2025 | First €50,000 stage recovered |
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| 30 September 2025 | Second €50,000 stage recovered |
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| Early October 2025 | Third €50,000 stage recovered; 100% of principal recovered |
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To summarize: the Vibroedil loan principal came back in full through a private settlement. All three €50,000 stages of the loan were recovered on the dates listed in the table above, and none of the investors holding a stake in the Vibroedil loan lost their principal.
The Vibroedil investor-notification timeline
We notified investors about the Vibroedil default in early September 2025, as soon as we reached an agreement with the company’s owner and could be reasonably sure that funds would be distributed to Stage 1 investors soon after, while still taking care not to jeopardize the process of fund recovery.
However, we did take feedback from the community very seriously. Since Vibroedil, we've moved to notify investors faster after a potential future default (though no other such situations have arisen up to this point) and refined our creditor procedures. We have also added more explicit context to borrower forecasts on project pages.
Maclear's Provision Fund: scope, balance, and limits
As most of our investors know, Maclear maintains a Provision Fund, built from a fixed contribution (2% of every successfully funded project). It held circa €2,000,000 as of 29 July 2026 (2% of the all-time funded amount of €102,500,000). The Fund is held in a segregated account apart from Maclear's operating capital. We've written before about why we built the fund this way, but here's what it means for the Vibroedil case.
The Provision Fund's main job is covering potential missed interest payments. Throughout the day 3–60 escalation window described above, investors keep receiving their interest payments from the Fund while the Maclear team works on the recovery. However, the Provision Fund does not, and is not designed to, guarantee that investors get all of their principal back in case of a real default: principal recovery depends on the individual loan's collateral and recovery process, as described above for Vibroedil.
We regularly publish the Provision Fund's current balance on our site, and that figure changes as we issue new loans and draw on the Fund elsewhere.
Maclear's repayment track record beyond the Vibroedil default
A single successful default recovery case like Vibroedil says something about how Maclear handles a problem loan.
But to see how the rest of Maclear's loan book performs, check Maclear's own project records. For example, the records in our Investor Portal section show five separately funded Smart Italia S.R.L. projects (an Italian industrial-energy company) about a week apart between 1 and 12 June 2025; every one was later marked repaid on the platform at the end of its 14-month term. A second, unrelated borrower, STRANDJA AGRO BISSINES EOOD, shows the same repeat-funding pattern: five projects funded between 11 and 22 June 2025, all repaid on schedule.
Two repeat borrowers on Maclear, each with five separately funded projects repaid at the end of their 14-month term.| Borrower | Separately funded projects | Funded | Marked repaid | Term |
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| Smart Italia S.R.L. | 5 | Weekly, 1-12 June 2025 | Weekly, 1-12 August 2026 | 14 months |
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| STRANDJA AGRO BISSINES EOOD | 5 | Weekly, 11-22 June 2025 | Weekly, 11-22 August 2026 | 14 months |
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In fact, if you go through the Funded section of the Investor Portal (registered users only), you will see a strong pattern of real, repeat lending relationships with European SMBs, as a series of multiple, separately dated projects. You will also find that each of these projects is marked as repaid at the end of its stated 14-month term. This also signifies that Maclear's investors keep lending to the same borrowers repeatedly – a sign of trust in these projects.
How to check Maclear's default record for yourself
You don't have to take our word for it: Maclear publishes enough underlying detail for an investor to check most of them directly.
- Repayment schedule and Claim Purchase and Assignment Agreement. Available to any investor holding a position in that loan, with a description of the actual repayment terms. Under this agreement, investors own the loan claim directly; Maclear acts only as Collection and Collateral Agent on their behalf.
- Fundraising-period escrow. While a project is still being funded, investor money sits in segregated escrow accounts at partner banks rather than in Maclear's own operating accounts — a separate layer of protection from the Provision Fund, which only applies once a loan is funded.
- Project card disclosures. For every project that passes our strict due diligence and becomes available for funding, we publish an extremely detailed description with a risk score, loan-to-value ratio, collateral list, market context, and stated use of funds. Read a few of these, and you will get a much better idea of how Maclear judges whether a new loan meets its lending criteria.
- PolyReg's public register. The register confirms Maclear's membership in the Swiss self-regulatory organization responsible for anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing oversight. Note that it isn't a general safety rating or an assessment of investment quality.
- Statistics and Investor Updates pages. Every month, Maclear publishes a blog update showing how our main metrics have moved (total number of investors, total amount funded, etc).
- Provision Fund scope and balance. Both are published on our site. Please note that the Fund does not function as deposit insurance.
Taken together, these documents and figures are what an investor can personally check to verify the specific claims and decide whether Maclear is indeed a legitimate P2P/P2B crowdlending platform.
Frequently asked questions
How many defaults has Maclear had?
Only one — Vibroedil S.R.L. is the only borrower on Maclear's platform to enter formal liquidation proceedings to date.
Is Maclear safe from defaults?
No P2P or P2B crowdlending platform can guarantee that no borrower will ever default. Default risk is inherent to any loan, ours included. What we can show is how we've handled the one default we've recorded: full recovery of principal within roughly two and a half months of the court declaration.
What happens if a Maclear borrower defaults?
Maclear has a set escalation timeline that starts with an initial contact with the borrower on day 3 of a missed payment, followed by a formal notice by day 30. If there is no repayment by day 60, we launch active recovery measures. Which path is used after that, be it a negotiated settlement, enforcing the pledged collateral, or full insolvency proceedings, is decided case by case.
Was the Provision Fund used for the Vibroedil default?
No, Maclear recovered the principal of the Vibroedil loan in full through a private settlement.
Does Maclear guarantee investor principal?
No, the Provision Fund covers interest shortfalls, not principal, so getting principal back always depends on whatever collateral and recovery process applies to that specific loan.
About Maclear
Maclear AG is a Swiss peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and crowdlending platform, headquartered in Switzerland. The company acts as a financial intermediary in the non-banking sector and is a member of PolyReg SRO, in accordance with Swiss financial regulations, particularly regarding AML, KYC, and GDPR. Maclear provides individual and qualified investors access to carefully selected business loan opportunities, with integrated risk assessment, a Provision Fund, and a Secondary Market for liquidity.
The content of this article is provided for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute investment, financial, tax, or legal advice. Peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and crowdlending investments carry a risk of partial or total loss of capital. Past performance does not predict future results. Liquidity on a secondary market is not guaranteed. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research and consult qualified advisors before making any financial decisions. The availability of products and services may be restricted in certain jurisdictions.