Peer-to-peer lending, joining the popular league.
Another form of investment and the future of $150 billion market capital.
Isn’t it a dream-come-true when loans are approved almost instantaneously? Peer-to-peer lending does exactly just that for users. Basically, peer-to-peer lending platform is a marketplace where lenders and borrowers are randomly matched for a simplified and quick loan agreement. Just like Tinder for loans.
The platform allows an easy access to the financial sources even for the small-personal-loans or microloans. Whether it be for an online garment store or a startup fund in the middle of town, peer-to-peer has favours it all. It is an innovation of financial service which answers to the demand of millennials in the developed world. Not only the millennials would be attracted to the low-cost but fast and less hassle service, but also the senior investors who are looking for higher-generated-return type of investment. According to Forbes, here are the 4 best P2P platforms for investors in 2017 are: Lending Club, Prosper, Upstart and Funding Circle. The growth of these platforms show stark improvement during the years. Lending Club, the world’s largest P2P platform, for instance:
The demand of users for the convenient and disintermediary method of consumer lending industry is directly reflected on the growth of this industry.
“PwC’s review of the potential market indicates that even more conservative assumptions project significant growth: our projected market of $150 billion by 2025 could be achieved even if the growth rate slows significantly compared to recent years…”
What about the developing world?
One of the significant features of peer-to-peer lending platforms for the un(der)banked would be digital credit scoring or alternative scoring. Why? Because 1.7 billion of them in India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Mexico and many countries more don’t even own account. ‘Too little money to register for an account’ would be one of the main problems for them, according to The WorldBank’s Global Findex.
Never having any financial footprint with the traditional system means they are unable to issue any loan they’d need to go on, to create and to build their stairs up from the poverty wall. Fortunately, Tala, Grameen Bank and BFEX(Bank Future Exchange) are trying to build the stairs for them.
Tala and Grameen Bank are concurrently issuing microloans for underprivileged people in the emerging markets such as Philippines, Sub-Saharan countries and Bangladesh. While Tala uses the unconventional data of mobile usage to evaluate individual’s creditworthiness for lending services, BFEX creates another platform for users to restart fresh. Its platform supports creditworthiness enhancement by building easy habits which motivate individuals to become more disciplined, via BFEX’s spotlight application.
The easy habits can include, drinking enough water per day or exercising regularly for 2 months. It is said in James Clear’s “How Long Does It Actually Take to Form a New Habit? (Backed by Science)” article that it takes exactly 66 days to form a new habit. Imagine if you could build your whole new financial history and a new encouraged habit within 66 days. With BFEX’s platform, anyone can create their own financial creditworthiness with only being inspirational to themselves and others.
