Trend Watch: Online Peer-to-Peer Lending...Part 1

I wonder how many bank officers who are in charge of marketing or product development have their own blogs or regularly surf the Internet to spot useful online trends. That would be a shame if none among them do because there are notable developments online which merit their close attention for two reasons: these developments can be a source of ideas for product enhancements, and these can alert them to future threats facing banks in this new century. One such development is "peer-to-peer lending."

"Peer-to-peer (P2P)" is actually a computer jargon that is now being borrowed and used in a banking context. At its core, P2P lending is microfinance, the term for which it is more popular here in our part of Asia. There are three P2P lenders that I intend to look into more closely in this post.

One is LendingClub.com which was recently launched on the 24th of May to engage in "person-to-person lending" to Facebook users. The other is Zopa.com, a British "social lending" venture launched in March 2005. The third is Prosper.com, which set up its "people-to-people lending" shop in the Bay Area in April 2006.

To be continued...



(The photo shown above courtesy of Freedidigitalphotos.net)

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