P2P的巨大历史贡献
2020-02-10 15:14阅读：
P2P 会在世界范围內壮烈牺牲。但是它的巨大历史贡献不容置疑。它的业务模式确有问题。政府是否打压不是关键。
日本的日经亚洲论坛（英文版）刊登张化桥的反思。
Collapse of China's disgraced P2P sector offers important
lessons.
Online platforms forced banks to improve offerings but model wasn't
sustainable.
Nikkei Asian Review, 10 February 2020.
In just five years, online non-bank lending has gone from a
cutting-edge investor favorite to disgrace, scandal and
collapse.
From LendingClub in the U.S. and Funding Circle in the U.K. to
Chinese peers Dianrong, 51 Credit Card and Yirendai, they have all
disappointed those who cheered them on, including me. They either
keep racking up losses or are facing an existential crisis or both.
In China, many P2P company founders have been jailed and the sector
is facing bans from a growing number of local governments.
How did things get this bad? In hindsight, online platforms
overestimated their ability to differentiate good borrowers from
bad. Talk of combining this artificial intelligence system and th
at algorithm turned out mostly to be hot air, to put it
bluntly.
Data on the 'subprime' borrowers who were driven to turn to P2P
lenders is not hard to come by, both from their activities on
social media and e-commerce sites and from conventional loan
application question responses. But while a borrower's ability to
repay a loan could be measured relatively easily, it has been
harder to predict their willingness to repay.
In theory, lenders can readily set interest rates to match the risk
level of each borrower, but this is precisely where most Chinese
P2P platforms ran into trouble. The higher interest rates charged
to risky borrowers often pushed them into default.
Online lenders were supposed to be more efficient as new, high-tech
players. But that was premised on their achieving a certain scale.
Few if any online lenders anywhere have gotten there yet.
Another premise was that any given delinquent loan would not have
much impact because online loans are relatively small and borrowers
would be spread out geographically, reducing concentration
risk.
But instead, collections have been comparatively expensive because
the process of chasing delinquent small borrowers is labor
intensive. Some Chinese P2P platforms used a 'name and shame'
approach to publicly pressure borrowers to repay. This tactic
backfired, with the lenders, not the borrowers, coming under
criticism.
I have seen how hard it is to run a debt recovery business in this
country over the past two years as vice chairman of YX Asset
Recovery. Leftist media, delinquent borrowers and loan cheats have
united to campaign against 'high-yield lenders' and debt
collectors. A heavy-handed police approach to regulatory compliance
has also scared legitimate collectors.
Given the nature of subprime loans, with short terms and high
default rates, higher interest rates should be appropriate. For a
platform to break even on a three-month, 5,000 yuan loan, an
annualized interest rate of roughly 100% would be needed.
This would mean the borrower would pay about 1,250 yuan in
interest, along with repaying the principal, at the end of three
months.
But that is all too much for consumer groups and government
officials. The Supreme People's Court earlier imposed an annualized
interest rate cap of 36% which has started to get enforced more
rigorously of late. This has been painful for all but the most
well-capitalized platforms like New York-listed Qudian and
Lufax.
At the same time, it has to be acknowledged that many Chinese P2P
platforms were little more than unscrupulous Ponzi schemes. Most of
these naturally collapsed, taking with them both their investors'
cash and the reputation of the whole sector.
In hindsight, P2P lending may prove to have been an unsustainable
business model.
The high ratio of loan losses and even higher share of loans
overdue has been too much to bear for the investors who put up cash
for lending through China's P2P platforms. To keep funders engaged,
most platforms quietly absorbed loan losses at great cost but
recent regulations have banned such practices.
The current regulatory campaign is set to force the P2P platforms
still in business to convert into licensed microcredit lenders
within two years. P2P lending itself would disappear.
The P2P platforms though deserve more, well, credit than they have
gotten as they have been a major catalyst for change in
China.
The country's banks have been nudged into beefing up their online
services in response to noisy fintech newcomers. Virtual credit
cards are taking hold even as conventional credit cards are made
more accessible for small-scale consumer borrowing. Banks appear to
be waking up to the importance of consumer lending just as
borrowing by companies slows and their bad debts grow.
The P2P saga has also taught hundreds of millions of borrowers as
well as savers valuable lessons about finance, investment and
self-protection. Hardly a day has passed since 2018 without
domestic media stories of an online lender overcharging borrowers,
of police arresting debt recovery agents for misbehavior in
collections or of a reckless borrower getting bailed out by his
poor parents.
Intriguingly, many Chinese fintech operators are now exporting
their expertise and tricks to Southeast Asia and other developing
countries.
All in all, despite manipulative and dishonest practices by many
operators, the fintech revolution on balance has been a positive
force for China. When the dust settles some years down the road, we
will find that lenders have become humbler and the public more
knowledgeable. This should eventually translate into cheaper credit
for disadvantaged consumers and small business which would
compensate for the sector's current pains.
Joe Zhang is vice chairman of distressed-debt recovery company YX
Asset Recovery and an investor in fintech companies including
Hangzhou Pailie Technology and Cuimi Tech.
