Monevator left a comment interesting reflections on experience as a Zopa lender – and speculations about what will happen in a crunch.
The biggest issue for me is Zopa has not yet been tested in anger. We haven’t yet seen how individual borrowers will behave in a peer-to-peer system if money really becomes tight. With some economists predicting a 1980s-style recession in every way except the shoulder pads, that’s a very real risk.
I have a hunch, just a hunch, that peer-to-peer will turn out to be more robust in a crisis than institutuional lending – becuase I think if better cultivates a more primal human sort of trust than the purely mechanical efforts of banks. But we’ll see, I guess!
Monevator also suggests it may be time for another Zopa podcast…
