Some university professors recently researched the effect of personal relationships on P2P lending platforms. They discovered three “effects”:
- Pipe effect. Friends of a borrower, especially close and off-line friends, act as financial “pipes” by lending money to the borrower.
- Social herding effect. When friends of a potential lender, especially close friends, place a bid, a “social herding” effect occurs as the potential lender is likely to follow with a bid.
- Prism effect. A friend’s endorsements via partially funding a loan reflects negatively (i.e., becomes a “prism”) on the value of the loan to a third party.
What the study shows is that the volume and patterns of lending and borrowing are influenced by, and strengthened by, the extent of the relationship between participating borrowers and lenders.
My take: Credit unions (and community banks) should interpret these findings to find ways of introducing P2P lending-type practices into their lending processes.
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The 2013 Financial Brand survey of marketers found that — not surprisingly — lending is at the top of the list of marketing priorities for the near future.
How are credit unions and community unions going to compete for the borrowing business that’s out there? If it’s going to be by berating big banks, pointing to the results of bogus customer experience surveys, and going on and on about how great their customer service is…then I’m not sure the results will be all that much better than they’ve been in the past.
Which is to say, not very successful.
What the results of the academic study suggests to me is that a credit union or community bank could improve its market share of the lending business in an area by creating a community of lenders and borrowers to redirect and/or insulate the flow of funds away from other sources and destinations to the CU or community bank.
I’m not suggesting that a credit union or community bank try to recreate a Prosper or Lending Club. Those firms have gone through a regulatory rigamaroll that no CU or bank wants to go through.
But I can’t help but think that are ways to avoid that regulatory nightmare and still achieve some of the feel of the P2P lending platform.
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On a P2P platform like Prosper, a lender (or multiple lenders) — OK, wait. Let’s call them for what they really are: Investors. On a P2P platform, an investor or investors lend(s) money to a borrower. The platform isn’t really an intermediary, it’s simply an enabler — i.e., enabling two or more parties to find each other and execute a transaction.
What does a bank/CU do? It finds depositors, takes their money, and promises something in return (where that something may or may not be financial). It then takes those deposits and lends some portion of it out to borrowers it deems worthy of receiving those funds.
The bank/CU is an intermediary. Depositors have no idea who gets the money, nor do they have any say in who gets the money or at what rate. There is no relationship or connection between depositors and borrowers.
But what if there was a relationship or connection? The academic study implies that the “platform” — in this case, the bank or CU — would benefit because lenders (in this case, depositors) and borrowers would be more likely to transact with each other.
In other words, one way for credit unions and community banks to gain market share in the lending market is to create a mechanism for depositors (lenders) and borrowers to create and strengthen a relationship.
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That “relationship” doesn’t necessarily have to be a one-to-one, named connection. A bank or CU depositor could provide input into determining who receives their deposits (or some percentage of it) by some dimension that characterized a borrower. For example, the depositor could indicate that they would like their funds lent to someone buying their first home, or to a small business owner who needs funds to grow their business, or to someone looking to pay off debts. They wouldn’t necessarily get to direct 100% of their deposits, but by giving depositors an ability to direct some percentage of the funds, it would approximate what’s happening on a P2P lending platform.
By making the elections of funds deployment public, other community members would see where their peers are looking to direct funds, and — as the study implies — become more likely to elect that their funds go to the same places. With publicly available information about where depositors would like to direct their funds, potential borrowers who fit the description(s) would become more likely to turn to the bank/CU for a loan, knowing that the FI is looking for borrowers like them.
The deposit nature of the relationship wouldn’t be changed — that is, the deposits would not become investments in the sense that they are on a P2P lending platform. The bank/CU is still an intermediary determining the creditworthiness of a borrower and the rate at which that borrower qualifies for a loan. But the depositor gets to provide some input into who gets the money (or some percentage of it).
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I realize I haven’t thought through this completely, and, for all I know, there’s some regulatory issue that stops this in its tracks. I’m just thinking about how smaller FIs are going to compete with the big ones for the coveted lending market.