Financing everyday essentials for everyone, with Mayur Patel
The paradigm of 'let's collect as much information on a customer ahead of time, try and score them, and then provide them with an unsecured product'. We just don't think that works as well as putting an asset in someone's hands, asking them to pay a small deposit. And knowing that once they have access to that smartphone device, it's actually going to improve their ability to make a living. It helps them power the hairdressing salon and helps them advertise their business on WhatsApp, you're actually improving their ability to earn a living and also then to pay back the instalments just a much more compelling and sustainable model for working in the markets where we want to have an impact.
I mean, behind this there is a very sophisticated predictive credit model and we make adjustments all the time to pricing and instalment plans, and we have a lot of investment on the connected estate IoT side. And our loan book actually has been remarkably consistent. And particularly when it looked over the last three years, despite massive disruptions, and it's also been resilient in the face of high inflation.
How to buy that boat you’ve had your eye on, with Joe Dalton
I mean, a lot of it's the same from a credit perspective. You're very much looking at the borrower and their underlying financial situation. So you know, as a lot of customers are in the boating space are directors or have their own businesses, there's a lot of reviewing, you know, financial information, profit and loss accounts and balance sheets and the business's performance, looking at the management team as well and their experience and how the business has performed - just as you would do if you were lending on a truck or a piece of machinery.
The difference then comes more around the use of the asset and obviously the asset itself - where lending to businesses for assets that are income generative or crucial to the operation of the business, a leisure yacht doesn't tend to tick that box.
And so there's a there's a nuance in the in the way that the asset is used in the way it's going to benefit the business. And then also there's the asset itself. So understanding the inherent value of the asset, its depreciation, the impact that that has as well.
NFT-backed lending, with Nuno Cortesão
We are on the tip of the iceberg. We have no idea where this is going to end. It's endless the level of opportunities here, and it's going to need to be fueled with credit.
I think the key is to bring the approaches that have been here for millennia, but in reality, cross them also with the new technology. We don't have to have centralised banks performing all these kinds of operations or pawnshops, as we have in the past we can have this retail approach it is going to be a very interesting exploration that we are doing in other companies are going to explore the market also in bring completely marvellous solution.
So we are super excited in reality, on top of the innovation dream on top of building the next frontier for finance, it also has this deep meaning of helping people that work with different rules typically don't have access to banking. If we look into the most Western countries, this now is a niche product for very specific purpose. But in the future, we will have people on countries where this kind of solutions, help them maybe to fulfil the dreams that they have, can be life changing.
Lending against luxury goods, with James Constantinou
I've been wheeling and dealing since I was a kid. And I started thinking about the other assets that you could possibly lend against, why aren't people lending against cars or wine or boats or aeroplanes, or pretty much anything? What restricts them? It really sort of started from there, to be honest with you, the bank's inability to function following 2008. They were pulling the rug out from under some really good people's feet, people that are halfway through development sites are having their loans called in, we were hearing stories of doom and gloom. You know, I have friends of mine that were playing golf with a bank manager the day before, but then the bank manager was calling them in the morning saying this is that £25k bank overdraft you've got it's going to have to be repaid.
And I thought, well, this is actually quite a good time to start this business. Because banks aren't lending people can't get their hands on money, but they have had quite a few years of growth. They've all got, we're not all, but I'm from Surrey, there's a lot of Range Rovers, Ferarris, people with expensive pieces of art or wine collections. Wouldn't it be great if they could secure a loan using some of those assets?
And that's really how it all started.
Is crypto mature enough to be an asset you can lend against, with Phil Blows
So in terms of our platform, we're only listing coins that we think are going to be around in 10-20 years time. And at the moment there's only three assets there. Bitcoin, Ethereum, what's called US dollar stable coins - which for 99% of crypto investors, that's enough. Bitcoin most people have heard about. Ethereum is a fascinating coin, all of the innovation, all of this decentralised financial products that you're seeing, that are appearing in the market, they're all being built on Ethereum, pretty much. All of the volume, all of the kind of innovation, all of the development that's going into building this crypto investing ecosystem is within the Ethereum blockchain.
Which is why a lot of analysts in the space are calling this year to be its breakout year where it's going to start really outperforming Bitcoin. But who knows, every time someone seems to say that Bitcoin seems to go up incredibly, but there's some solid use cases. And you can see in terms of the fees that miners are earning, they are 10 times the fees on the Ethereum blockchain this year than they did on the Bitcoin Blockchain. Ethereum is is the internet of money. This is all part of has it got valued over and above just being a speculative asset.