It seems that the meteoric rise of peer to peer lending within the UK can no longer be ignored by the government, who are talking with the Financial Conduct Authority to regulate the p2p loans industry.
The peer to peer lending industry (also known as crowdfunding) has seen a huge growth since the start of the financial crisis as private companies have moved in to fill the funding gap left by the big banks reluctance to lend. However, rather than providing the funding directly, peer to peer lending websites simply match borrowers with lenders (individual investors). Two of the leading peer to peer websites in the UK today are Zopa and Ratesetter.