#1502 2005 · Zopa (UK) · consumer lending
A Lending Market With No Bank: Lenders Bid, Risk Sliced
问题
Banks stood between savers and borrowers, collecting a wide spread: savers earned little, borrowers paid much.
背景
Online peer-to-peer lending began in 2005 with the public launch of Zopa in the UK, founded by Richard Duval, James Alexander and Giles Andrews. The Bank of England later chronicled the market Zopa opened in a quantitative study of nearly 14 million UK loan agreements.
Zopa's marketplace worked, in the Bank of England's description, along the lines of an eBay auction: borrowers posted loan requests and lenders bid the terms they would accept to fund them. As banks deleveraged after the financial crisis, Zopa found new success and competitors such as RateSetter and Funding Circle entered the market it had created.
换别人会怎么做
Charter a bank, take deposits, hold the loans, and charge both sides for the privilege.
他们看到了什么
A bank's spread pays for its balance sheet; if risk is sliced small enough for lenders to diversify themselves, the balance sheet is unnecessary and the market can clear directly, leaving both sides more of the spread.
那一手
Zopa holds no loans on a balance sheet. The platform matches individual lenders to individual borrowers, with lenders bidding the interest they will accept, and risk handled not by bank capital but by slicing: loans are spread across many lenders in small pieces, so each lender diversifies over a portfolio of borrowers and a single default dents the return rather than the whole principal.
为什么管用
Competitive bidding compresses the rate toward what risk actually costs; slicing means each lender holds many small exposures, so diversification substitutes for capital; the platform earns from match volume, not interest margin.
值了多少
P2P lending began with Zopa's 2005 launch; the Bank of England study analyzed nearly 14 million loan agreements across the UK market
什么时候会失灵
It fails when credit assessment is weak (retail lenders cannot price complex risk) and in systemic shocks, when diversification across borrowers fails at once; platforms also drift toward funds that quietly rebuild the balance sheet they removed.
后来呢
The template for marketplace lending platforms worldwide.
资料来源
- [1]Peer-to-Peer Lending and Financial Innovation in the UK (Bank of England working paper)Bank of England, 2016bankofengland.co.uk