Beating the drum for companies such as Funding Circle, as in its Great British Bake Off television advert, is not without its criticsIn late 2004, a group of businessmen got together in a barn in Buckinghamshire to cultivate a plan to overhaul consumer finance. Entrepreneurs including Giles Andrews, a former used car salesman, Richard Duvall and Bruce Davis — who together had helped to establish Egg, the online bank — had the simple idea of bringing consumer lenders and borrowers together over the internet, cutting out the middleman. The business they created, Zopa, was the world’s first peer-to-peer lender. This “Ebay for loans”, as an early incarnation was envisaged, has since spawned a global industry that has lent more than $75 billion. In Britain, the three leading platforms alone — Zopa, Funding Circle and Ratesetter — have arranged a combined £5.3 billion of loans to consumers, small businesses and…

Source: The Times September 03, 2017 23:03 UTC