近日，美国P2P行业开始广泛使用 marketplace lending
这一概念来重新给自己贴标签。其中一篇在MIAC发表的署名文章已经被全文翻译成中文，美国某P2P研究机构负责人在接受国内媒体采访时也用到了marketplace
lending 这个概念。但这些中文资料里都将这个概念翻译为：“市场借贷”。
我以为，这个翻译不妥，将marketplace
翻译成“市场”，没有体现原文的内涵，不够“信达雅”。浏览文章，从这个概念的内涵看，我将其翻译为”集市借贷“。原来被称为P2P平台的在这里是开集设市的，本身不参与交易，而借贷双方直接入市交易。
上述英文文章全文和链接如下：
Marketplace Lending: An Online
Alternative to Traditional
Banking
http://www.miacanalytics.com/aboutmiacperspective/Marketplace_Lending.html
Marketplace lending, formerly peer-to-peer (P2P)
lending, has just turned a corner. The recent name change
accurately describes the evolution of the industry over the past
year. Renaud Laplanche, CEO of Lending Club, the world’s largest
marketplace lending platform, formally suggested calling the
industry “marketplace lending” at the LendIt 2014 conference in
May. Ron Suber, President of Prosper Marketplace, the second
largest platform, was recently quoted in the NY Times saying a
suitable name for the industry is “online consumer finance.” Notice
neither has the term “peer” in it.
Peers, or
individual investors, are playing a diminished role in the
industry, as large institutions, including hedge funds and banks
themselves, dominate the investor demand. Some of this is the
result of banks partnering with platforms, and some is just the
result of the volume of institutional money, the power of their
credit-analyzing algorithms, and the number of their
analysts.
The
industry was built around connecting borrowers with lenders online,
at agreed terms, without involving a bank or credit card company.
By cutting out the highly regulated and often inefficient process
of applying to a bank for loans, borrowers benefit from lower
rates, and investors benefit with higher returns.
Institutions noticed the outsized returns
investors could earn on these marketplace lending platforms, and
decided they wanted a piece of the action. They got involved in a
number of ways: by agreeing to fund large amounts of loans;
partnering with platforms to share leads on potential borrowers;
and even bringing their own borrowers and capital to the
marketplace to facilitate loans to their customers, utilizing the
efficiency of the online
model. Some examples include direct partnerships between
Union Bank, Titan Bank and Congressional Bank with Lending Club,
and Banco Santander establishing relationships with both Lending
Club and Funding Circle. This increase in institutional money has
spurred platforms to offer investors whole loans, in addition to
the fractional loans that the industry grew upon.
Originally centered on a few platforms offering
unsecured consumer credit loans, the industry has expanded to
hundreds of platforms offering access to a variety of products.
These include small business loans, student loans, real estate
secured loans, and going as far as loans to secure financing for
mining projects.
As the
industry has expanded to include new asset classes, the volume of
loans issued continues to show rapid growth. Lending Club and
Prosper issued a combined $2.4B in 2013, increasing 175%
year-over-year from $871MM in 2012. As risk managers ourselves,
MIAC is impressed at how much of that volume is amortizing into
investors pockets – 92% of investors in Lending Club have earned
6-18% annual yields since its
inception. (1)
Building
upon the idea of an increasingly diverse marketplace, a big buzz
during the 2014 LendIt Conference in San Francisco was the growth
of real estate secured peer-to-peer platforms. It
is important to note that many of the secured loans funded through
these kind of platforms technically fall under the crowd-funding
category, as it aims to reach a funding goal by aggregating many
small investors and, often times, includes additional benefits such
as debt, equity, and/or rewards. 2014 saw the
first attempt to crowd-fund a US hotel online, according to Realty
Mogul, the Beverly Hills-based tech company behind the
campaign.
Through
crowd-funding and Realty Mogul’s online investment platform, the
Hard Rock Hotel Palm Springs plans to raise at least $1.5MM for
improvements and additions. Individual investors
in the hotel will receive a portion of the rental income from the
hotel through quarterly payments (debt), capital appreciation of
the hotel when it is sold (equity) as well as special VIP treatment
at the hotel (reward).
Other
real estate secured marketplace lending platforms include Patch of
Land, which focuses on crowd-funding residential properties for
improvement and resale, and LendInvest, a UK based firm dedicated
to providing funding for both residential and commercial mortgages.
MIAC believes real estate secured marketplace lending has a large
and untapped market opportunity and we expect to see this sector
grow in 2014.
The US is
not the only country that is seeing rapid growth and innovation in
the space. Although still dominated by the “big
three” platforms, which include Zopa, RateSetter, and Funding
Circle, today, there are nearly 30 active platforms in the United
Kingdom. (2) Marketplace
lending is also a large part of China's active shadow banking
sector - the financial system that operates alongside the
traditional banking system. Loans issued through China’s platforms
reached 68.03 billion yuan ($11B) in 2013, about three times the
22.86 billion yuan in 2012. Marketplace lending
platforms are also forming and growing in countries such as South
Africa (RainFin), Australia (SocietyOne), India (i-lend), and
Brazil (Fairplace). Moreover, platforms are
expanding across national borders. One such company is Funding
Circle, the UK-based platform that lets individuals and
institutions loan money to small businesses. In October 2013,
Funding Circle merged with San Francisco-based Endurance Lending
Network, which was rebrandedas Funding Circle USA.
In addition to globalization and innovation
within the industry, lending platforms have also taken new strides
in developing new metrics for credit risk
underwriting. Upstart, a platform that allows investors and
borrowers to enter into Income Sharing Agreements (ISAs), where a
borrower repays investors with a percentage of their future monthly
income, targets young borrowers with minimal credit history. They
enrich a borrower’s profile with education-related variables to
predict their earning potential, employability, and propensity to
repay the loan. Such variables include schools attended, area of
study, academic performance, and work history.
According
to Upstart’s website, as of April 2014, Upstart backers have made
2,192 offers to borrowers totaling approximately $3.5MM, without a
single repayment default over a span of 14 months. If Upstart’s
methods are proven to hold true, lenders across the finance
spectrum could benefit from a non-traditional, data-enriched credit
underwriting approach, building upon the widely used FICO-driven
methodology. This, in turn, could bring credit to a previously
underserved population.
The Future of Marketplace Lending
Early on,
marketplace loans were largely for consolidating pre-existing
(usually credit card) debt, which seemed like good news for
everyone. However, as marketplace lending continues to grow and
branch out into new asset types, and maybe riskier loans, you can
be sure the regulators are watching closely. Currently, all
US-based marketplace lending platforms are regulated by the SEC.
What is unknown, however, is if US regulators
plan to crack down further on platforms as outstanding loan
balances continue to increase across all asset types. Regulators
exist for many reasons, but in this case their role is primarily to
protect the little guy, the borrower, from getting in over his head
in debt.
As an
example, let’s look at the US market for student loan debt. In the
US in Q1 2014, outstanding student loan balances reported on credit
reports increased by $31B to a total of $1.11 trillion. The
increase since this time last year was $125B. With mortgage
originations, credit card balances and auto loan originations all
decreasing in Q1 2014, student loan was the only type of debt to
increase significantly. Serving this portion of the market are SoFi
and CommonBond, the two biggest US platforms when it comes to
student loans. Both offer borrowers a chance at new loans or to
refinance existing loans, and both utilize some form of community
to further connect borrower and
investor. (3)
On December
3, 2013, The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a
rule that allows it to “supervise certain nonbank student loan
servicers.” While this rule focuses on servicers, it is very open
ended and difficult to understand where their authority begins and
ends. Most importantly, “in their annual report by the Bureau’s
Student Loan Ombudsman, the CFPB identified a broad range of
concerns voiced by student loan borrowers in complaints to the
CFPB.”(4) With this being a
popular political issue, we wouldn’t be surprised to see the CFPB
expand their supervision in this area, and possibly take a look at
marketplace student loan platforms in the near future.
LendIt 2014
awarded its first annual Innovator of the Year award to Jon Barlow,
Founder, CEO & CIO of Eaglewood Capital Management, for his
firm’s work in creating the first ever securitization of
marketplace loans. Eaglewood’s initial deal was a $53MM
securitization of strictly Lending Club notes, completed in
September 2013.
On May 8,
2014 they closed on an additional $47MM of loans, bringing the
combined transaction to $100MM worth of Lending Club notes. While
this first deal was not rated by any agency, Eaglewood was still
able to sell the majority to a large insurance company,
unidentified by the fund. With Eaglewood agreeing to
take up to $13MM in losses on the original $53MM deal
(approximately 25%), it is looking to show it has skin in the game,
as opposed to many pre-2008 securitizations that were completely
unloaded off the books of the securitizing firm.
SoFi went a
step further, engaging Toronto based DBRS to rate the second of
marketplace loan securitizations, which consists of a $152MM pool
of student loans originated on the SoFi platform, which received an
A rating. The fact that SoFi was able to get a rating from the
world’s fourth largest rating agency legitimizes, in the eyes of
some wary investors, the idea of marketplace lending, and also
opens the door to many more investors.
MIAC
believes the marketplace lending industry is securitizing in a
prudent manner today, and these deals involve high-quality
borrowers and responsible underwriters. If any future
securitizations receive ratings from Moody’s, S&P or Fitch,
there’s no telling how much the industry can grow. But as long as
2008 is still fresh in people’s minds, investors around the world
will be wary of securitizations of new asset classes. The fate of
these first few deals will go a long way in determining the future
of securitization in the industry.
As
presented above, growth is strong in the marketplace lending
industry. Year-to-date, the market has seen numerous partnerships,
acquisitions, and further financing rounds (offered) to platforms
of all asset classes. Additionally, investors show confidence by
reinvesting the returns back into the
products. (5) The second half of 2014 also
promises to be big for marketplace lending, as Lending Club is
expected to go public.
MIAC likes how the industry has evolved thus far
and believes in marketplace lending’s chances of adapting to
increased regulation, developing best practices for the industry,
building secondary markets and strengthening customer acquisition.
We look forward to playing an important role in the industry’s
maturation process.
(1) Foundation Capital, Lending Club,
Liberum
(2) iResearch
(3) All statistics in this paragraph from NY Fed
Quarterly Report (Q1 2014) on Household Debt and Credit, May 2014.
(4) CFPB
(5) Lending Club
作者
By: Brian Kearon Analyst,
Borrower Analytics
Capital Markets Group
Brian.Kearon@miacanalytics.com
Jeffrey Fromer Sales Associate,
Business Development
Jeffrey.Fromer@miacanalytics.com
Eli Clark-Davis,
Analyst
Business Development
eli.clark-davis@miacanalytics.com
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