The news
UK High Street banks are, we know, extracting a lot of money from customers with no good reason, though people can fight back, as we showed in our Hands-on guide to taking on the banks - and winning! But have you ever considered social lending over the internet? It's an alternative to putting yourself into a bank's greedy clutches.
According to a new study, while High Street banks might be needed for everyday banking, few liked or respected them. Some 49 per cent said that banks do not have their customers’ best interests at heart, 81 per cent reckoned that the banks are self-interested and 76 per cent though them greedy.
Against that background, it's not surprising that 74 per cent of those surveyed said they would consider either getting a loan or lending money through a social lending community, rather than their bank.
The study - Internet-based Social Lending - was carried out by the Social Futures Observatory think-tank and surveyed 1,000 people.
Its finding include a case study of Zopa, an online venue for lending and borrowing money that's said to have over 100,000 members in the UK and been set up by many of the team that launched Egg.
Of course, the whole point of social lending is to try to find a way that gives lenders a better rate of interest than banks offer - and to allow borrowers to pay less than they'd otherwise do. And these two things, seemingly, are what it delivers.
The worry, of course, is that lenders might get stiffed but, according to Zopa, the company uses "all the safety measures banks use, plus a few more" with "all borrowers identity-checked, credit scored and risk-assessed" and anyone lending £500 or more having their money "spread across at least 50 borrowers".
Is this all absolutely kosher?
Well, we think it is but reckon you should decide for yourself. Check out the press release on page two, download the full 116-page report over here (it's a sub-2MByte PDF and a pretty easy read) and then comment in this thread in the HEXUS.lifestyle.news forum.
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External.links
Social Futures Observatory - home pageSocial Futures Observatory - research papers
Zopa - home page