P2P

This morning, BofA has released a humongous, nearly 200-page "primer" on the global sharing economy which in the eyes of Wall Street and Silicon Valley is the biggest disruptor behind virtually all 21st century business models. Since it is impossible to summarize the report, which will be largely ignored by most of BofA's clients who will instead focus on the hundreds of charts scattered throughout, we will simply summarize the basics as laid out by BofA, and then present some of the more interesting charts, with the remainder to be published in subsequent thematic posts.

Back in February we showed that it is not only China which is troubled by non-performing loans: America's own nascent private Peer 2 Peer industry was having very similar issues, evident most notably in the books of category "leader" LendingClub, whose write-offs had soared to nearly double the company's own forecasts.

PBoC governor Zhou Xiaochuan thought about it, and decided it’s probably not a good idea for borrowers to get P2P loans for down payments on homes.

In fact, he said last weekend, it’s illegal: “Funds used for down payments cannot be borrowed."

“Peer-to-peer lending is probably a bad idea,” we wrote, earlier this month. “Securitizing peer-to-peer loans is definitely a bad idea,” we added.

The P2P space has witnessed monumental growth over the past several years. P2P platforms lent over $12 billion in 2015 alone and as we documented last summer, Wall Street is supercharging the space by securitizing the loans.