The Simon Gompertz Effect
Yesterday, the BBC published a well-researched article on its web site, by its Personal Finance Correspondent, Simon Gompertz, about peer-to-peer lending. I commented on it here.
It was the only article on the subject picked up by Google yesterday and featured on the BBC’s most read list of articles on its web site for most of the day.
As a member of Zopa, I follow their figures closely, which are easily accessible to any borrower or lender. The amount of money that lenders have demanded from the site has risen significantly.
At 09:00 on Saturday, the money demanded by prospective borrowers was £9.4million, whereas at the same time today the figure was £14million. Over the same period, the amount of money made available by lenders was £18.2million on Saturday and £12.1 today.
Doing a crude calculation means that £6.1million of lenders money has been allocated to borrowers and there are another £5million or so that could be lent. Zopa’s team of credit experts will be kept busy on Monday, checking all these new borrowers. And probably rustling up some more funds to lend.
Is this all the effect of one well-written article by Simon Gompertz on the BBC?
There’s another good article in the Observer today. I suspect that Zopa’s figures will be just as interesting tomorrow.
Update on 11th June 2012 at 08:00
Total demand is now £15.8million up and funds available are £11million. This works out as a swing of £13.6million over the weekend.
It did look at a few other weekends and typically, there is a swing between £2.5million and £4.5million.
Whatever the truth is, something extraordinary happened! And it is all good! Unless of course you’re a banker!
The Anonymous Widower 
I hope it was the Simon Gompertz effect as he mentioned our http://www.lendwithcare.org site where you don’t get a financial return but you do get a great feeling and your money back when you ‘invest’ in a poor entrepreneur in a developing country and enable them to work their way out of poverty through their small business
Comment by lendwithcare (@lendwithcare) | June 11, 2012 |
To be fair the peer-to-peer lending article was factual and well-written, and if the one he wrote about you was the same, I hope you see the same results. the difference with Zopa is that all all the information is published and avaiable to members.
Comment by AnonW | June 11, 2012 |