P2P-Banking.com

A new research report on peer to peer lending was published at VRL KnowledgeBank. The 200 pages PDF-report (table of contents), written by Ray Cain, can be purchased online. It covers the following issues:

• What is P2P lending? Who are the main players?
• What is their operating model and crucially their profitability projections?
• What are the practical issues involved in building a large virtual community of lenders and borrowers, such as compliance, identity verification, credit screening, IT infrastructure, customer service and marketing? Can borrowers and lenders really be peers?
• What short term lessons can financial services providers draw from P2P?
• The future for P2P lending… is it an opportunity or a threat for the lending industry? How to blend P2P with other financial services? Can it be rolled out across the full range of mass market retail financial services?

Yesterday the headline of Dutch De Financiele Telegraph read "ABN AMRO brings together borrowers and lenders". ABN Amro is a large bank in the Netherlands. The article mentioned Boober and that ABN Amro is offering a different service.

So what is ABN Amro offering? P2P lending?

Actually the service in question can be found on this page and it is a free download document that lenders and borrowers can use to agree on a loan contract between them. Other the supplying the download ABN Amro is not involved in any resulting loans. In fact the site states (in Dutch):

… The general information on this page has not been meant as a recommendation. ABN Amro will not take liability …

I guess that can be filed under marketing using the 'peer-to-peer loan' buzz or at best under customer service.

Consultancy Gartner predicts that: "By 2010, social-banking platforms will have captured 10% of the available market for retail lending and financial planning". Not surprisingly Zopa is happy about that forecast. I think this is an over-optimistic outlook but James Gardner of BankerVision (working at Lloyds TSB bank) who also thinks it is aggressive points to the example of Paypal, which has been underestimated years ago. A more supportive view comes from Antony Mayfield while taking Zopa as example.

Found this interesting paper written by Prof. Dr. Udo Reifner on regulation of micro loans in Europe. Written (2000) well before the advent of p2p lending over the internet, it compares regulation for micro loans in 7 European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, UK). It is one of the best sources that is publicly available, that I have seen so far.