THE PEER TO PEER MARKET PLACE REVOLUTION-THAT ARE CHANGING THE WORLD

THE PEER TO PEER MARKET PLACE REVOLUTION-THAT ARE CHANGING THE WORLD

ഓൺലൈനിലൂടെ കടം വാങ്ങാം

Peer-to-peer lending, sometimes abbreviated P2P lending, is the practice of lending money to individuals or businesses through online services that match lenders directly with borrowers. Since the peer-to-peer lending companies offering these services operate entirely online, they can run with lower overhead and provide the service more cheaply than traditional financial institutions. As a result, lenders often earn higher returns compared to savings and investment products offered by banks, while borrowers can borrow money at lower interest rates, even after the P2P lending company has taken a fee for providing the match-making platformand credit checking the borrower.

Also known as crowdlending, many peer-to-peer loans are unsecured personal loans, though some of the largest amounts are lent to businesses. Secured loans are sometimes offered by using luxury assets such as jewelry, watches, vintage cars, fine art, buildings, aircraft and other business assets as collateral. They are made to an individual, company or charity. Other forms of peer-to-peer lending include student loans, commercial and real estate loans, payday loans, as well as secured business loans, leasing, and factoring.The interest rates can be set by lenders who compete for the lowest rate on the reverse auction model or fixed by the intermediary company on the basis of an analysis of the borrower's credit. The lender's investment in the loan is not normally protected by any government guarantee. On some services, lenders mitigate the risk of bad debt by choosing which borrowers to lend to, and mitigate total risk by diversifying their investments among different borrowers. Other models involve the P2P lending company maintaining a separate, ringfenced fund, such as RateSetter's Provision Fund, which pays lenders back in the event the borrower defaults. Bankruptcy of the peer-to-peer lending company that facilitated the loan may also put a lender's investment at risk, as has happened in 2015 in the case of TrustBuddy.

The lending intermediaries are for-profit businesses; they generate revenue by collecting a one-time fee on funded loans from borrowers and by assessing a loan servicing fee to investors (tax-disadvantaged in the UK vs charging borrowers) or borrowers (either a fixed amount annually or a percentage of the loan amount). Compared to stock markets, peer-to-peer lending tends to have both less volatility and less liquidity. Peer-to-peer marketplaces are really booming right now. It’s not just us talking about the peer-to-peer revolution – news sites like Forbes, Mashable, and others are also loving this new way of doing things.

Before we look at the list of over 50 peer-to-peer marketplaces that are changing the world, what do we mean when we use the phrase: peer-to-peer marketplace?  Typically, an online peer-to-peer marketplace brings people and/or businesses together online to deal with each other directly without having to go through a slow, expensive middle man.Take CurrencyFair as an example. Widely used by expatriates working or living abroad and businesses dealing across borders, CurrencyFair’s peer-to-peer currency exchange allows people to cut out the middle man to get the best possible exchange rate for various currencies, whilst avoiding expensive and often hidden bank charges. Using CurrencyFair’s MarketPlace platform, buyers and sellers are brought together to exchange funds directly with each other, setting their own rates in the process. For individuals not restricted by time, they can set highly competitive exchange rates and wait to be matched with a buyer, often achieving a better rate than high-flying traders.

China should tighten regulation for online lending "as soon as possible" with stricter internal auditing requirements to prevent failures in a greatly over-leveraged sector, the head of China's oldest peer-to-peer (P2P) lender said in an interview.Non-bank lenders are increasingly able to skirt rules on indebtedness by expanding into the largely unregulated realm of financial technology (fintech), Chief Executive Cliff Zhang of online financing platform PPDAI told Reuters.

"All these so called peer-to-peer players need to become real peer-to-peer platforms" through regulation, Zhang said. "They need to change their business models."China's P2P and online finance industry has boomed in recent years. The government has kept a hands-off approach to promote alternative sources of funding for consumers and small businesses, which industry insiders say are often denied credit by banks and other mainstream financial institutions.

PPDAI, for instance, was founded in 2007 and specializes in small loans to consumers looking to pay for gadgets and travel. The firm expects transaction volume to nearly quadruple in 2016 from 5.6 billion yuan ($850.87 million) last year, Zhang said.But scandals including the $7.6 billion Ponzi scheme uncovered at one-time P2P market leader Ezubao in February have prompted closer scrutiny from the authorities.

Lenders such as guarantee companies and small loan firms are permitted to lend up to 10 times net assets. But some have launched P2P businesses or marketplace loan platforms where the absence of such a constraint has resulted in leverage ratios that are at 20 or even 30 times, Zhang said."They create a platform, they call it a P2P platform, they find the borrowers offline and they put the borrowers online to attract funds from investors and they also provide the guarantee services to the borrowers to make the investors feel that it's safe to invest," he said.

"Actually their leverage is far more than 10 times already, but they call it internet finance or fintech, so they're not regulated by the traditional laws for the offline guarantee companies."

Clear rules on what online lenders can and cannot do could help prevent failures and abuses, Zhang said. Lenders should also be required to have internal audit teams to improve risk control and transparency, he said.

∙ നിങ്ങൾക്ക് അരലക്ഷം രൂപ കടം വേണം, ഒന്നോ രണ്ടോ ദിവസത്തിനുള്ളിൽ കിട്ടണം, ഈടു വയ്ക്കാൻ സ്വർണമോ വസ്തുവോ ഒന്നുമില്ല. കൊള്ളപ്പലിശക്കാരെ ആശ്രയിക്കാതെ അത്തരം ആവശ്യങ്ങൾക്ക് ധനസഹായം ലഭിക്കാൻ ഓൺലൈൻ പ്ലാറ്റ്ഫോമുകൾ പ്രചാരത്തിലാകുന്നു. അനേകം കമ്പനികൾ രംഗത്തു വരുന്നതിനാൽ നിയന്ത്രണച്ചട്ടങ്ങൾ ഏർപ്പെടുത്താൻ റിസർവ് ബാങ്ക് ഒരുക്കം തുടങ്ങി. ഇത്തരം വായ്പയിടപാടുകളെ പീയർ ടു പീയർ ലെൻഡിങ് (peer to peer ( P2P) ലെൻഡിങ്) എന്നാണു ലോകമാകെ വിളിക്കുന്നത്. സ്മാർട്ഫോണുകളും ഓൺലൈൻ സേവനവും വ്യാപകമായതോടെ അവതരിച്ച പുതിയ ധനകാര്യ ബിസിനസ് മോഡലാണിത്. യൂബർ ടാക്സിയുടെ ധനകാര്യ രൂപമെന്നു വിളിക്കാം.... ടാക്സി ഇടപാടിൽ ടാക്സി ഡ്രൈവറും ഓട്ടം വിളിക്കുന്ന ആളും തമ്മിലുള്ള ഇടപാടിനു മധ്യസ്ഥൻ മാത്രമാണ് യൂബർ എന്നതു പോലെയാണ് പി2പി വായ്പ കൊടുക്കൽ വാങ്ങലിൽ ഓൺലൈൻ കമ്പനിയുടെ സേവനം. കടം കൊടുക്കുന്നയാൾ വാങ്ങുന്നയാളിന്റെ ബാങ്ക് അക്കൗണ്ടിലേക്ക് നേരിട്ടു പണം ഇടുകയാണ്. ഇരുകൂട്ടരിൽനിന്നും ചെറിയ ഫീസ് വാങ്ങിമധ്യസ്ഥത വഹിക്കുക മാത്രമാണ് ഓൺലൈൻ കമ്പനിയുടെ ജോലി. തീയതി രേഖപ്പെടുത്താതെ ഒപ്പിട്ട ചെക്കും അവർ വാങ്ങിവയ്ക്കും...

Prof. John Kurakar