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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

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To: maceng2 who wrote (43165)	12/22/2005 1:13:52 PM
From: clochard	Read Replies (1) of 116555

Check out Zopa - it looks quite clever: zopa.com All lending and borrowing happens in the Zopa markets. The markets work just like, well, markets. Lenders put their wares on display; in this case, money they are prepared to lend to other people for a certain length of time. And, just like any market, different vendors may have different prices (otherwise known as interest rates). Some may pick lower rates but only want to lend to borrowers who have a very high likelihood of paying it all back. Others may pick higher rates but be prepared to be more flexible, thereby taking a punt on borrowers who might be slightly more likely to default. Borrowers can then come and have a sniff about, see what the rates are and if they’re good value agree to borrow. Because Zopa cuts out the middleman, everyone gets a great deal. Of course this would all be very complicated and risky if everyone traded one-on-one with each other, so Zopa glues the whole thing together with its offer matching system. This divides the lenders' offers up into small chunks and distributes them around potential borrowers - at least 50 in fact. Each loan a borrower gets is made up of lots of bits of lenders' offers. No one gets to borrow from the same person twice. All lenders and borrowers enter into a legally binding contract with their respective borrowers and lenders. Zopa manages the collection of monthly repayments and if any of that money is not paid on time, uses exactly the same sort of recovery processes that the high street banks use. Zopa earns money by normally charging borrowers an exchange fee of 1% (opening offer - zero exchange fee) and if borrowers take out repayment protection insurance on their loan, receives commission from its insurance provider. Zopa doesn't charge lenders a bean.

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