Report from webank – exploring P2P finance

Wednesday night here at NESTA Towers saw webank, an event exploring the emerging world of peer-to-peer finance which I hosted together with Christian Ahlert of openbusiness. 

The evening attracted a large and diverse crowd, a clear demonstration of the wide interest in this particular type of innovation in a sector where traditional infrastructures are being tested to their limit (and beyond).

The session started with three companies presenting their innovative business models: Zopa – the established social lending platform, Kubera Money – a new online mechanism for ROSCAs and Midpoint & Transfer – a disruptive currency exchange platform. 

Proceedings then turned to a highly entertaining panel discussion featuring the three excellent voices of James Gardner (Bankervision), Umair Haque (Havas Media Lab) and Giles Andrews, MD Zopa UK.

We shall be documenting the evening fully including all video footage at the dedicated webank website, but in the meantime here is a taster from the panel discussion with all the panel footage here

Many of the attendees have also blogged about the event so check them out for a more articualate summary than I could ever give:

• James Gardner: what would happen if?
• Simon Deane-Jones: webank: new rules for the new economy
• William Heath: thoughts from NESTA’s webank session
• 00:/: NESTA webank event | social lending platforms
• Mark Earls/Herd
• Anne McCrossan: Alienation
• Rory Winston: webank event at NESTA
• Volans: Finance 2.0: the new infrastructures

It certainly feels like there is some mileage in exploring web-enabled financial innovation a bit further so watch this space.