Giles Andrews, Zopa

[Dave Birch] There's no doubt that something very interesting is going on in the place where social networks, P2P and banking begin to overlap. The idea of directly connecting, for example, lenders and borrowers subverts one of the core functions of banking in a modern economy -- but that's no reason not to do it. In fact, a few people are having a go. As John Clipplinger observes, in many ways it's rather surprising that these guys didn't get off the ground earlier and that there aren't more of them, but they are certainly attracting attention:

Social banking platforms - such as peer-to-peer (P2P) lending networks like Zopa and Prosper - will grow to control 10% of the worldwide market for retail lending and financial planning by 2010, according to research by consultancy Gartner.

[From Finextra: Banks facing increasing competition from social networks - Gartner]

This seems a bit far-fetched to me, but anyway I decided to go and talk to Giles Andrews to find out some more about the generally important area of social lending. Giles is the UK Managing Director of Zopa. Before helping to set up the social lending company, he spent 10 years in the motor industry, co-founding Godfrey Davis Motor Group. Then set up his own consultancy practice where clients included Tesco and Tesco Personal Finance. In this podcast he explains what Zopa is and where it may be going, and in passing introduced me to the utterly splendid idea of the personal bond market.

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