The first major Peer to Peer Lenders were rightly hailed as an alternative to bank lending, offering a better deal for borrowers and lenders. They successfully did things differently from the banks but perhaps the most important lesson that they missed was "avoid writing your own in-house system because they are always written in a vacuum and always, within days of going live, you wish you hadn't done it that way"!
If you look at the accounts of alternative lenders you see they have raised huge funds to develop their Peer to Peer Lending (aka Marketplace Lending or Online Direct Lending) businesses. And apart from the cost of customer acquisition, the largest costs these firms carry are IT related...with millions spent on their in-house systems.
But, in the early days of the industry, there wasn't a choice. There wasn't a global commercial IT platform, built for online and peer to peer lending, comprehensive automation, flexible configuration, to adapt to many P2P/digital lending business models, integrating easily into a website, front and back. Now, we have exactly that, multi-lingual, multi-currency global product designed for sharing of development costs and minimising operational costs.
Now some existing online lenders have outgrown their initial in-house systems and are looking for lending software to help them grow. Equally, new entrants to the market are searching for highly automated digital lending software to help them launch quickly and efficiently, maybe even in 90 days. So Online Direct Lending might now be on the road to profitability.
Take a look at Madiston's step-by-step guide to your own digital lending software platform.