It has been more than two years since p2p began to develop rapidly around the world in 2018. Although this industry has developed rapidly, Peter Renton, organizer of the p2p summit LendIt, said that the scale of global p2p lending transfer funds is less than Deutsche Bank's assets. The market of % of assets on the balance sheet is far from mature and will have a real impact on the banking industry

But what is interesting is that there was such a news in January this year that Wells Fargo in the United States banned employees from investing on p2p platforms. The serious attitude taken by banking giants towards p2p reflects the inherent potential of p2p to encroach on the banking market

Initially p2p lending was regarded as an online phenomenon, but it is clear that this understanding now needs to be overturned - p2p has It is a financial model. The main business of banks is p2p. They can evaluate lenders, market financial products, issue loans, provide post-loan services, etc. What banks can do but p2p does not is lend their own capital. P2p only lends funds directly to investors on the platform. From this point of view, p2p is quite a bank without a balance sheet, which means that due to the lack of regulatory constraints, p2p is actually a light bank. In addition, because it can use special technologies and methods to price risks, it is comparable to banks. It has its own cost advantage

In the origin of p2p, the way Bank of America views p2p is divided into two categories. One is small banks like TitanMainStreet. On the other hand, they are unable to recommend themselves to large p2p lending clubs. However, the latter can serve loan applicants to obtain some intermediary fees. On the one hand, it purchases lending club loan assets to enter the credit card field where small banks have no competitive advantage. For them, p2p is a type of data provider that they can cooperate with. Big banks like Wells Fargo believe that p2p is a disruptor that may explode in the future and will slowly extend their tentacles to their own territory

The market environments of China and the United States are very different, and the p2p business models are also very different. The competitive relationship between p2p and banks has not yet emerged, but banks have not ignored p2p because of this. The current positive attitude of regulators towards Internet finance has clearly created a certain relaxed environment for the development of p2p. Ma Weihua, former president of China Merchants Bank, said indirectly in last month Finance will soon be replaced by Internet finance. Internet finance forces commercial banks to transform their traditional business models. From Ma Weihua’s speech, we can see banks’ concern and sense of crisis for p2p. Therefore, banks’ deployment of p2p can be said to be a logical move. .