Social (Peer to Peer) Lending comes to New Zealand
Posted in: Conventional
With the financial upheavals in the world the advent of social lending has grown somewhat under the radar of most people. In the USA www.prosper.com and www.lendingclub.com have grown quickly followed by www.zopa.co.uk in the United Kingdom.
In a world where institutional lenders have become risk averse and deposit returns have fallen it is probably not surprising that peer to peer lending, facilitated by the ever present Internet would find its place in the sun. As institutional lenders tend to charge in the high teens of percent on lending and paying low units of percent on deposits; at some point the emergence of peer to peer activity was inevitable. All that was required to take advantage of the interest rate spread was a suitable framework or platform.
Somewhat surprisingly New Zealand has been late to the peer to peer lending party, but now www.lendit.co.nz is available and worth a look. Experience elsewhere has shown that peer to peer lending activity has a strong role to play in the credit markets, now the Lendit platform makes it possible in New Zealand.
