Relendex Blog

ALTFI EUROPE SUMMIT: Alternative finance providers outmanoeuvring banks
By Michael Lynn CEO, Relendex Limited

The great and good as well as the smaller players of the alternative finance community were gathered for the AltFi Europe Summit in London last Thursday. The vast space was abuzz with talk of challenger banks, mobile banking, Peer to Peer platforms and FinTech activity. It was in fact the sound of new players eating the High Street banks’ lunch.

The peer-to-peer (P2P) industry has seen tremendous growth in the past year that even big players like Goldman Sachs are launching online platforms and RBS has announced that it is setting up an SME lending platform. The dividing lines between conventional banking and the alternative players were beginning to blur. Not all platforms are looking to become a bank however Zopa, the personal loan (and oldest) P2P platform, has announced its intention to become a bank in the near future.

From the Government’s recent Housing White Paper (you can read our overview here), it remains that more must absolutely be done to address the housing shortage we face. As always, it is never just one or two factors that create the crisis that we currently endure in the housing market.

Yesterday we saw the long-awaited release of the Housing White Paper presented by Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Sajid Javid. While it did well in recognising that the UK housing industry is ‘broken’, did actually put forth any worthwhile ideas or plans?

Right at the beginning it presents the three main problems the housing market faces.

Crossrail’s 2017 Eastern section launch: How will it affect property prices?

 What can we glean from the UK Autumn Statement?