Percent Review 2026: 10-14% Yields on Private Credit Notes — What You're Actually Buying

What Percent Actually Is (and What Changed From Cadence)

Percent was founded in 2018 under the name Cadence. The company rebranded in April 2021. Same platform, same deal mechanics, new name. Nelson Chu, the founder and CEO, has been running it since day one. If you search for early press coverage and find references to Cadence Alternative Lending, you are looking at the same company. Percent raised a $12.5 million Series A in 2021, co-led by White Star Capital and B Capital. That round's Regulation D filing sits in SEC EDGAR for anyone who wants to pull the Form D.

The platform is accredited-investor only. Regulation D private placement exemption governs every deal on the site. Percent operates as a FINRA-registered broker-dealer, a status it obtained in 2023. That registration adds a layer of regulatory accountability that earlier fintech credit platforms lacked. The broker-dealer designation means Percent has compliance obligations and examination exposure that a pure technology intermediary does not carry.

As of early 2026, Percent has approximately 45,000 investors on the platform, a mix of accredited individuals and smaller institutions. The deal flow is focused on lower-to-middle-market borrowers: typically transactions under $25 million in size. Percent works with 25+ loan originators who bring the underlying assets. Those assets span SMB loans, consumer receivables, merchant cash advances, venture debt, litigation finance, and Latin American SMB credits, among others. Percent curates that originator pipeline heavily. Fewer than 10% of borrowers who apply to list on the marketplace actually get listed.

The Deal Structure — What You're Really Buying

This is the section most reviews skip. Pay attention here, because the structure matters when a deal goes sideways.

When you invest on Percent, you are buying an unsecured promissory note. Percent creates a special purpose vehicle (SPV) that holds the underlying pool of assets. The SPV issues notes to investors. Those notes are obligations of the SPV. They are not a direct claim on the collateral in the pool. If the originator defaults and the collateral recovery is contested, you are in line as a note holder, not as a secured creditor with a perfected interest in specific assets.

Percent calls out this distinction in its deal documents, and I think it deserves more emphasis than most investors give it. The underlying loans may be fully collateralized, covering invoice receivables, equipment loans, or whatever the originator holds. But your note does not give you that security interest directly. You are relying on the SPV structure to pass the economic value of recovery through to you. That structure works fine in normal conditions. Under stress, structural layers can create friction and slower recoveries.

Two product types matter here. The standard offering is a single-deal note tied to one originator's asset pool. The Blended Note is a single-ticket product that spreads your capital across multiple live offerings for instant diversification. For investors starting at $500, the Blended Note makes practical sense. Concentration in a single nine-month SMB receivables deal from one originator is a real risk at small portfolio sizes. I looked at how the Blended Note weights across deals. The granular weighting is not publicly disclosed, which is a limitation worth knowing.

Deal durations run 6 to 36 months. The typical deal is around nine months. That short duration is structurally attractive. You are not locking capital for three to five years as you would with private equity or real estate debt. There is no secondary market. If you need out before maturity, there is no exit. That is a hard constraint you need to price before committing.

Yields, Terms, and Historical Performance

I looked at the platform's disclosed track record. The numbers are more transparent than most private credit platforms publish, and they are worth taking seriously alongside appropriate skepticism about dataset size and vintage.

The weighted average annualized yield across funded deals has been reported at approximately 14.43%. Gross returns after losses have come in around 14.6%. Nelson Chu said publicly, in a February 2025 Crowdfund Insider interview, that select corporate loan tranches are pricing at 20% or better. That number applies to specific deals, not the portfolio average. Do not confuse the two figures.

The historical default rate is approximately 2.5% of deals funded. As of a 2022 data snapshot, the platform had funded over 300 offerings, raised roughly $559 million in financing, had approximately 274 deals fully repaid, and recorded six defaults. Six defaults on 300-plus funded deals sounds reassuring. The catch is that 2018 through 2024 was, with the exception of a sharp but brief disruption in 2020, a relatively benign credit environment. Private credit portfolios originated during low-default periods will look clean until they do not. A full stress test of this asset class at 2008-level credit conditions has not happened on this platform.

On fees: Percent charges no fees directly to investors at this time. The platform earns its revenue from fees charged to borrowers and originators. There is a planned transition to a model where Percent collects approximately 10% of stated interest before distributions. A deal quoting 14% would net roughly 12.6% to investors after that haircut. That change matters for your return calculation, and you should confirm the current fee status on any deal before committing capital.

Uninvested cash earns interest in an FDIC-insured account while you wait for deals to open. Percent does not charge a fee on that sitting cash. That is a small but real differentiator versus platforms that leave idle capital at zero.

The Risk Case — Unsecured Notes and Platform Risk

Here is what concerns me about this structure. I want to be direct about each point.

The note-holder problem is the primary structural risk. If an originator defaults and the SPV's asset recovery is less than the outstanding note principal, you take the loss. The SPV is a bankruptcy-remote entity, which protects you from the originator's general creditors. That is the design. But it does not guarantee full recovery on the underlying collateral, and it does not make your note senior to anything inside the SPV itself, depending on deal structure.

Illiquidity is the second material risk. There is no secondary market on Percent. None. If you need cash in month four of a nine-month deal, you are stuck. This is categorically different from a publicly traded bond fund or even a closed-end fund with periodic liquidity windows. Private credit is the trade-off: higher yield in exchange for locked capital. That trade-off is fair, but it must be explicit in your planning before you fund an account.

Platform risk deserves its own mention. Percent is a fintech startup. It has institutional backing and a FINRA registration, but it is not a bank, not a fund, and not a regulated investment adviser. If Percent as a company were to shut down, the SPV structures are designed to wind down independently. The assets do not disappear. But operational disruption to a startup platform mid-portfolio creates real friction and potentially real losses. You are taking on Percent entity risk alongside credit risk.

Deal availability is a practical constraint that functions as a risk factor. Percent's marketplace has limited inventory at any given moment. I have seen investor commentary noting that desirable deals fill within hours of listing. If you are building a diversified private credit allocation at $500 to $5,000 per deal, you may need to check the platform frequently or depend on the Blended Note, which removes deal-selection control from you.

The asset mix includes categories with meaningful tail risk: crypto-collateralized loans, merchant cash advances, and international SMB credits in Latin American markets. These are not homogeneous. Credit dynamics in Mexico or Brazil differ substantially from domestic consumer receivables. If you are selecting individual deals, sector-level due diligence matters.

How It Compares to Yieldstreet and Fundrise

I covered the Yieldstreet versus Percent comparison in detail for a prior piece. Here is the short version for context.

Yieldstreet requires a $10,000 minimum on most direct deals. That is 20 times Percent's $500 floor. The entry gap matters enormously for investors who are building into private credit incrementally. Yieldstreet also operates across a broader asset universe: real estate debt, art finance, legal finance, and corporate credit. Percent is a specialist. It does private credit only. If you want one platform for diversified alternative assets, Yieldstreet is the broader tool. If you want pure fixed-income private credit at minimum capital commitment, Percent is the cleaner answer.

Fundrise is a different animal. It is primarily a real estate equity and eREIT platform with some private credit products added. Fundrise accepts non-accredited investors. Percent is accredited-only. If you are not accredited yet, Percent is not available to you regardless of what you think of the yield profile. For accredited investors who specifically want debt income rather than equity appreciation in real estate, Percent is more directly targeted than Fundrise.

Republic, which sits in a different lane, focuses on equity crowdfunding under Regulation CF and some venture structures. It is not a private credit comparison. Percent does not compete in that space.

The meaningful comparison to Percent is direct institutional private credit funds accessible through registered investment advisers: PIMCO, Ares, Blackstone's non-traded BDC products. Those vehicles offer similar exposure but at minimums of $25,000 to $500,000 or more, with longer lockups and more complex tax reporting via K-1s. Percent's $500 minimum and 1099-INT reporting structure is genuinely simpler for investors who are not yet operating at institutional scale.

Who Should (and Shouldn't) Use Percent

You are a good fit for Percent if you are an accredited investor who wants fixed-income yield above what investment-grade bonds pay, you understand that higher yield requires accepting illiquidity and credit risk, and you have capital to commit that you will not need for 6 to 18 months. The $500 minimum means you can test the platform with a small allocation before scaling. The Blended Note is a reasonable starting point if you want instant diversification without monitoring individual deal availability.

The platform also works well as a yield complement to a portfolio that already holds equities and real estate. Private credit at 12-15% net does not correlate strongly with equity market moves. It does correlate with credit cycles, which is a different risk entirely.

You should not use Percent if you are not accredited. Full stop. You should also skip it if you need liquidity within the investment window, if you are sensitive to platform concentration risk in a startup-stage company, or if you are not comfortable holding unsecured notes rather than direct collateral interests. The yield premium is real, but it compensates for real structural limitations. Investors who are unclear on what an unsecured promissory note means in a default scenario should read the deal documents before committing, not after.

I would also caution against allocating a large percentage of a fixed-income sleeve to Percent at this stage. The platform's track record is promising and more transparent than most peers. But 300-plus deals across a relatively benign credit cycle is not the same evidence base as a 20-year fund with audited returns across multiple downturns. A 5-10% allocation to private credit via Percent, as part of a broader income strategy that includes liquid bonds and diversified credit exposure, is a reasonable use of the platform. Concentration in one fintech marketplace is not.

For further diligence, the YieldTalk review of Percent is one of the more thorough independent writeups available. The FINRA BrokerCheck entry for Percent confirms its registered broker-dealer status and is worth a five-minute review before you fund an account.

Author Disclosure: Jeff Barnes, MBA has no personal position in any company, fund, or platform named in this article. Angel Investors Network has no current commercial relationship with any party mentioned. AIN provides marketing and education services, not investment advice. Past performance does not guarantee future results. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal.