Zopa Case

Zopa is a UK based company provide financial service through internet, Zopa offer personal loan services, featuring P2P lending that provide a platform for people borrow and lend money without banks thus it could offer a cheaper rate for borrowers while assure lenders security by providing credit check for borrowers. It makes profit from taking commission charges from both lenders and borrowers, and gaining their competitiveness by providing better rate than banks.

According to Zopa (2011) described the founder of Zopa are Richard Duvall, James Alexander, Sarah Matthews and Dave Nicholson who organized the largest online bank of England--Egg Bank. Then they co-founded Zopa when they saw the immense business opportunities of the financial industry in 2005. Zopa grows quickly until now with over 500,000 members. The environment factors at that time enable Zopa to grow rapidly; especially the financial crisis and credit crunch had changed banks risk management, borrowers often turned away by banks by offered expensive rates that created an advantage for Zopa.

China is no doubt one of the largest markets the world over. The major lending financial models are mainly traditional-based bank in China, and traditional bank lending model depends mainly on the borrower's holding property as collateral to borrow money. However, in Zopa, lenders and borrowers can trade freely on Zopa platform without requiring any collateral. It can help a lot people who cannot borrow by the traditional way and provide a network platform for debit and credit. So, if Zopa entry Chinese market, it will have a good development opportunities and potentials.