Retail investor money in p2p lending has been slowly eroding for the last few years, but the UK’s p2p lenders still counted on retail investors a fair amount; the pandemic has helped to accelerate the shift to institutional capital from pension funds, hedge funds and other large investors; “This is definitely the direction of travel,” said Stuart Law, Assetz’ CEO, to the Financial Times. “We expect to see more and more institutional capital in the sector.”; some of the government schemes to help companies get through the crisis have also helped to accelerate this trend as all capital must be funded by institutional investors; RateSetter CEO Rhydian Lewis told the FT last month “everyone may be more comfortable if lending is done by institutions”. But, he added, “institutions get their money from normal people. Those people should be able to access the value from finance.” Financial Times.
