The Contrarian Investor: Is P2P the next big opportunity?

Is P2P the next big opportunity?

Readers will know I love to bang on about the need for disruptive change, especially if it means upending the conventional investment industry paradigm, which is to charge investors a very substantial ‘rent' for the privilege of underperforming.

In the conventional funds space, creative destruction and remorseless change is at work, with clean pricing a genuine game-changer. The ETF juggernaut keeps on pushing forward, with recent numbers from ETFGI suggesting global inflows continue remorselessly: listed index-trackers now have some $2.64trn in assets. Outside the mainstream of equity and bond funds, we have seen much less innovation, especially for the cash sitting in client accounts in need of a decent income.  One glimmer of hope in this respect might come from a much younger disruptive sector – the alternative finance...