ABSTRACT
The provision of credit through online lending platforms, also known as FinTech credit, is an expression of a process of innovation that has increasingly affected the financial services industry since the recent financial crisis. The FinTech credit market is innovative in that, through web-based platforms, it offers borrowers and lenders cash opportunities and the possibility of gaining interest rates outside mainstream financial services providers. This chapter provides an account of the growth of the FinTech credit industry since its rise in the wake of the 2007–2009 financial crisis. In so doing, it reviews the evolution of some lending platforms from disintermediated to re-intermediated actors, and the implications of this process for their co-existence with traditional intermediaries in the financial services domain. By also focusing on the current Covid-19 pandemic crisis, we consider the platforms’ view of their growth as a possibility of standing on equal footing with traditional financial intermediaries and the regulator view (particularly in the UK) of FinTech credit as a business model that still needs to gain trust to be recognised as a valid alternative to others.
