Thanks to Tim Kitchin for emailing me to say that Zopa's website is up and running. Tim says in his mail:

I am proud to be peripherally connected to this new financial services venture, just launched by the former founding team at Egg.

Essentially it’s a bid to disintermediate the banks in the personal lending market. It’s a personal mutual lending exchange. Backed by Benchmark Capital.

Customer proposition is therefore to give back to lenders and borrowers the margins currently raked off in profits by the banks. Benefits are estimated at a 30% APR improvement for lenders; and a 20% APR reduction for borrowers.

For individual lenders, it creates a ‘consumer debt bond’ at a risk-level and duration of the lender’s choice.

Spread the word. Reclaim control. Invest in fellow human beings.

We are talking serious disintermediation.

They say:

Zopa's an unusual offering in a number of ways, but in a lot of other ways it's a product of our time.

Five years ago, if you wanted to book an unpackaged holiday to Vladivostok with a stop-off at Prague, you couldn't. Now you can, and you can do it easily and reasonably.

Just as you can now get organic cumquats delivered to your home. At a time that you're likely to be there.

Or bid against some bloke in Arkansas for a boxed Millennium Falcon.

Or read a record review at three in the morning and have the album on your computer at ten minutes past three and have the best tracks mixed into your own compilation at quarter past. Nerdy? - maybe. Impressive? - oh yes.

Call it a me-trend or freeforming or whatever you want, the fact remains that people are rejecting one-size-fits-all products or one-way-is-the-only-way services because they're starting to realise that their own size or their own way is, for them, much better.

That's why Zopa lets you manage your money in your own way. At Zopa, you can take calculated risks or play it safe, you can be impatient or you can play a long game, you can pocket your profit or reinvest it, you can watch your investment every day or every month. None of these ways are right or wrong, they are just how it is.