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"If you have some money left over at the end of the month, imagine being able to move it into a P2P lending platform with one click." The last time people in t
by bradleyjg 11y ago
"If you have some money left over at the end of the month, imagine being able to move it into a P2P lending platform with one click."
The last time people in the UK went looking for better interest rate on their savings they found online Icelandic banks. They put large sums of money into them (even local governments!). They apparently didn't consider that there was a reason these banks were paying higher rates than their local banks. When the banks went under and the resulting shortfall was greater than the entire GDP of Iceland, they were furious and demanded their own government "do something about it". The resulting bailout of speculators ended up costing the Treasury billions of pounds.
So I don't think the taxpayers of the UK should be all that thrilled by the brave new world of being able to move money into P2P lending schemes with one click.
- aembleton 11y agoIt's not that far off one click already. I can set up Zopa to lend out money, then just transfer money with `1 click` from my current account.
- notahacker 11y agoAgreed, transferring money to lending accounts is pretty easy anyway going by direct to the P2P provider. The wider issue here is that high street banks (or "challenger banks" marketing themselves as equivalent to high street banks) are subject to an awful lot more scrutiny around how they advise customers to handle their finances[1]. If your differentiator from other banks is encouraging your depositors to buy into a wider range of somewhat riskier alternative lending products outside your own control, then the same people that made a fortune from arguing consumers were missold PPI and mortgages are lining up to take shots at you if and when things go wrong... [1]considering the special privileges they get, that's the way it should be