Lending Over Spending?

Zopa has provided something of a light-hearted look at the benefits of peer-to-peer lending.

One for the football fans, Zopa has conducted an exploration into what might-have-been had a number of big clubs chosen to lend their money in transfer windows past – rather than spending that money on over-priced flops. The UK’s leading peer-to-peer platform has calculated exactly what a number of previous transfer fees would now be worth, had those fees instead been invested via the Zopa platform. Zopa also highlighted a number of players that clubs could have picked up in this latest transfer window, had they previously chosen to go down the peer-to-peer lending (rather than the spending) route. Had Chelsea come to Zopa with £50m back in January 2011, instead of adding Fernando Torres to their ranks, the club would now be sitting on £59.5m – enough to lure Angel Di Maria away from Madrid!

Giles Andrews, CEO and Co-Founder of Zopa, explained the rationale behind the experiment:

“Spending isn’t always the best option, as this list of transfers all-too-clearly shows. If these clubs had shown a little patience and instead lent their money at an average interest rate of 5% over time, they would have some very attractive prospects on the table this season. With interest rates and ISAs at many banks in an offside position against inflation, reliable alternatives like Zopa are providing predictable and better returns for consumers who are prepared to think outside the banks.”

The vast majority of investments made through the Zopa platform have not been subject to the fluctuations in value that come hand in hand with the purchase of footballers. A boat-load of major football clubs probably aren’t going to re-think their investment strategies in the next transfer window based on these findings. But with a number of key developments like the peer-to-peer ISA on the horizon, an increasing multitude of ordinary investors will come to view Zopa as a consistently stable source of bank-beating returns.