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Social Lending at Zopa.com (French Version)
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Reference: SI-163-FR
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Year: 2007
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Number of pages: 15
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Geographic Setting: Estados Unidos, Reino Unido
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Publication Date: Feb 15, 2008
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Source: IESE (España)
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Type of Document: Case
Description
Zopa.com is the web's first lending exchange where individual borrowers and individual lenders can come together. Borrowers can access funds directly from other individuals instead of dealing with a bank. Since its launch in March 2005, Zopa's model of social lending had been the latest poster child for challenging traditional banks' business models.
Despite the hype, many industry observers doubted that a direct model without intermediaries would effectively scale in the banking industry. Upon Zopa's release in 2005, most high street banks did not view Zopa as a major threat. One analyst referred to Zopa as "one of these things that could catch on but probably won't." Could Zopa "catch on"? If so, could it attract enough customers to actually prove a nuisance to traditional banks?
Learning Objective
Change of business model as a response to a potentially disruptive technology.