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Lendit 2014 – Global Alternative Finance Marches On

This week saw the Lendit Europe conference take place at London’s 155 Bishopsgate venue. It’s fair to say this one drew all the big names in the alternative finance space and provided a fantastic marketing opportunity for us. The biggest difference between this event and one hosted earlier by AltFi News was the European participation. There seems to have been a step change in activity across Europe in the last six months. Although each jurisdiction faces its own regulatory and credit-scoring challenges and these markets are at various stages of maturity, there was representation from France, Germany, Italy and Finland on the panels. We also networked with people from the US, Japan, Australia, Norway and Belgium with alternative finance platforms, so the global market is gathering pace quickly. Innovation continues to be a central part of the industry, with an afternoon session dedicated to new types of alternative finance, including virtual currencies, lending to an aircraft leasing company through a platform and short-term finance for app developers. We were pleased to see the practice of cross-border lending becoming more established, although it is again not without challenges. The Spanish market for example, suffers from very poor credit data, while Bondora, which creates loans across five different nations, is therefore subject to five different sets of rules. To build on this, we’re attending the European Crowdfunding Network’s Conference on 11 and 12 of December in Paris. Forming a strong collaborative approach will help regulators understand the opportunities in the market and hopefully open up our platform to doing business abroad in a much easier way than is currently possible.

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