February, 2008

Read all about it!

Posted by Amy at 12:35 pm

What a great start to the day. The sun is shining, we are all unscathed after the earthquake last night and to top it off; today Giles appears in The Independent!

According to The Independent, we are one of “The Googles of tomorrow”. In an article which appears in the paper today Robert Jones, director of brand consultancy Wolff Olins explains the next generation of brands. “We’re too well-informed and too sceptical to believe in image. What brands have to do in the future is not create a big idea that people buy into, but be useful for people. The days of pure consumerism in the classic economic sense are over. Consumers are also creators, who interact with brands such as YouTube, and who make ethical rather than purely financial decisions when they’re buying things. This is the age of the post-consumer. There’s a French word for it: ‘consommacteur’.”

Giles goes on to explain “We took a practice that has been going on in communities around the world for centuries and created an online opportunity for it. We connect creditworthy borrowers with people who have some money that they would otherwise have used as investment funds or savings. By connecting the two parties directly, rather than via a bank, we can offer significant economic savings… We diversify a lender’s funds by dividing the full amount they want to lend into lots of mini-loans, and every loan a borrower receives is made up of contributions from lots of lenders…. “We’ve probably built a better-performing credit model than anyone else in the country because our bad debts are so minimal – less than 0.1 per cent.”

You can read the full article written by Tim Walker here and if you buy the newspaper, you even get to see a picture of Giles. That’s got to be worth a trip to your local newsagents!

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Watch out for those malfunctioning doors.

Posted by Amy at 2:12 pm

We saw an article today which tickled our funny bone. There appears to be a spate of malfunctioning doors hitting banks around the country. The latest sees a man being locked in his bank for over an hour and a half. This comes after a 5 year old boy walked into a ‘closed’ bank 19 hours after it was supposedly locked up for the weekend.

Next time you go into your bank, remember to take some supplies; you could be in there for a while!

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10% in 2010

Posted by Giles at 5:00 pm

The web has revolutionised pretty much everything and continues to do so, and ever since day one (and clearly for a good few days before then) at Zopa we’ve believed that the future of money is human and involves using the web to do things better. That’s why we’re particularly happy to see that a recent research report from Gartner predicted the following: 


“By 2010, social-banking platforms will have captured 10% of the available market for retail lending and financial planning.”



That’s just two years away. Now, we’re very nearly three years old (more on that to come) and in those first three years we’ve seen Social Lending (or Peer to Peer Lending as it’s also referred to) firmly establish itself as a new way to lend and borrow money in many different countries around the world.



Since we launched back in March 2005, we’ve grown substantially in the UK and gone on to launch in Italy and the US. As more and more people realise the potential of Zopa (and other similar companies that have since launched), then that 10% figure seems even more likely to us – especially given the relentless trend towards transparency and the ongoing struggle of the big banks to become so. 



Obviously James over at BankerVision cast some doubt over the prediction (he works at Lloyds TSB !!!) but with encouraging blog posts today from Johnnie Moore and Anthony Mayfield (who also looks at the extent to which Zopa is being talked about over at Money Saving Expert

and predicts a ‘tipping point’ for us soon in the UK) – we’re feeling particularly chuffed and excited today so we thought we’d share that with you. 



Here’s to 2010 and 10%, maybe even more!




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Share-A-Load

Posted by Amy at 11:41 am

We’re loving the idea of this - a new system in the Philippines that lets mobile users share their credit with each other and top each other up if they are running low. Using technology to enable human beings connect with each other and exchange valuable things? Hmmm . . . . that feels very familiar doesn’t it?

“Globe allows its users to send (via SMS) their phone credits or “loads” to others running low. The service costs PHP 1 (about US .024) for each transaction and is available to prepaid and postpaid Globe subscribers. Donors simply contact an automated number, punch in their pin code, the recipient’s number, and how much money they’re giving and both parties are notified upon receipt”.

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No January blues at Zopa

Posted by Giles at 4:11 pm

There has been a wide array of intriguing stories coming out of the Credit Crisis and I thought I’d share one which has more than a little irony…

Our biggest competitor - the banking industry - has just delivered the biggest boost to the Zopa business to date.

Yup, the very people we are trying to cut out to offer borrowers and lenders a better deal have been very busy driving both to us in record numbers.

The banks’ overzealous drive to expose themselves to debt – here or in the sub-prime markets of the USA – has caused the credit crisis and even led to a run on a British bank. Stock markets have been plummeting around the world and much of it is due to the scale of the banks’ mistakes.

So private investors, nervous of further falls are busy trying to find a more secure home for the money they are withdrawing from equities. A greater number than ever before are coming to Zopa because here they can get virtually risk free returns of 7% to more than 10%.

And because banks are desperate to find every way they can to recoup the losses they have suffered, they are putting up the rates they charge on loans and credit cards. This is making loans at Zopa look even cheaper than they normally do. So an increasing number of borrowers are flocking to Zopa to get the better personal loan rates we have on offer.

Having our major competitors driving up the number of both borrowers and lenders that come to us has just led to our best January ever. Sometimes, in the rather weird world we are now living, help comes from the most unlikely sources.

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