“P2P”, invented by Zopa in 2005, was one of the main unique business models that was at the core of the early success of Fintech businesses in disintermediating banks and offering better/cheaper/faster experiences to both lenders and borrowers. Over the past nearly two decades  P2Ps have had many fates – variously succeeding, going bust, committing fraud, listing, being sold and transforming into banks . 

In this episode we dive into the lessons learned from this history with Jaidev Zopa’s CEO who oversaw the transformation of Zopa from a pure P2P model to one mixed with banking and then more recently dropping P2P altogether.

What lessons can be drawn from the whole experiment? What worked well and what did not? What was it in the end. what set of circumstances, that led the firm that originated the whole idea to abandon it?

In this conversation Jaidev and I discuss the two-decade arc from both our perspectives from P2P not existing, through P2P existed but we didn’t know of it, through to hearing about it and initial reactions with a deeper dive into Jaidev’s years starting in 2014 first as COO and then as the CEO who drove the recent changes in business model.

We end with reflections on not just in what ways is the current Zopa different but also in what ways is it the same? One may change an engine in a car without affecting the car’s appearance, appeal and indeed destinations it drives to.

• what a crisis in domestic banking amounted to in the 1970s

• badly-run to fraudulent P2Ps leading to platform failures which damaged the sectors reputation

And much much more