Banks Don’t Do Parties
It’s many years, since I had any hospitality courtesy of my bank. It was probably a meal from David, when we were getting each other out of various scrapes.
But last night, one of the peer-to-peer lenders I use, invited me to a party.
One important thing was said, which addresses one of the problems of the peer-to-peer lending market and that was that the major peer-to-peer lenders had asked the government to legislate and bring them under the wing of the Financial Conduct Authority. It will probably happen in the spring of next year, but as with most government legislation, who knows? How many organisations or groups of companies have actually asked to be regulated? I can’t think of one, even outside of the financial area.
There was also a feeling at the party, that the various high-profile payday and short-term lenders cause confusion in consumers’ minds and this didn’t help. Let’s face it, judging by the number of bus and television adverts for these higher cost lenders, the public might even think that peer-to-peer lending didn’t exist or was a very niche product
It would be interesting to know, how many possible borrowers, never check that they might get a better deal from a peer-to-peer lender than their current bank, simply because they don’t know of peer-to-peer lending or don’t know how to contact the lenders? For instance, it would also be interesting to know such things, as how many people with excellent credit ratings, who regularly borrow money, don’t use the Internet!
If I ran a peer-to-peer lender, I’d get someone like YouGov to do a survey! After all, the party last night was a convention of believers, so anything obtained there would be statistically skewed.
The party was also a great place to exchange ideas and investigate how your money was handled. When did your bank last explain to you personally, why they were giving you such a poor rate on your Deposit Account? No one, probably gets decent service out of their bank these days, until they pop their clogs, as only then will the bank lose the easy money they make from that customer.
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The Anonymous Widower 
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