IBS Journal July 2016


03


which has now lent £1.5 billion in consumer loans. For MPLs, also including Funding Circle, which has lent £1.3 billion to British businesses, and Ratesetter, which also claims to have lent £1.3 billion, a key strength is the simplicity of their offering.


builds great customer trust and advocacy. Technology is another thing: a. Not having legacy technology and b. More importantly, by focusing on doing a small set of things very well we’re able to create processes and technologies that are optimal for those specific customer


Whereas the High Street banks are frequently a jack of all trades, MPLs often offer just one or two products and ensure they are best in class. This has a knock-on effect on the technology back end, notes Janardana, who spent 12 years at Capital One prior to joining Zopa as Chief Operating Officer in 2014, and then took the top job a year later.


“Having worked at a bank for a long time and having known the industry for quite some time, I feel a big advantage is our culture. This is a company built with the customer at its centre and that drives a lot of different things. One of them is the way we design our products, which are transparent and easy to understand. That


journeys, rather than trying to do everything - which is what a bank tries to do,” says Janardana.


The side effect is greater efficiency, claim proponents of the model. “Lending Club used to put a slide out which said their servicing costs are 40% of a typical bank, and our servicing costs are a fraction of Lending Club’s,” claims Janardana. “That efficiency comes from great technology, from simplified processes, from being very focused and doing very few things.”


Banking backlash


The sector has also been given a boost by anti-bank rhetoric, much of which originated from the FinTech


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