当金融遇上互联网 The sharing economy is a playground for Wall Street

When the concept of “peer-to-peer” lending popped up a decade ago, libertarians and leftwing idealists alike cheered. For the idea of using the internet to match borrowers who needed cash with lenders seemed to epitomise the sharing economy.

10年前“个人对个人”（peer-to-peer,简称P2P）贷款突然兴起时，自由主义者和左翼理想主义者都为之欢呼。这是因为，利用互联网为需要资金的借款者与贷款者牵线搭桥似乎带有“分享型经济”的特征。

What made P2P sound doubly exciting — at least in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis — was that these platforms also appeared to thumb a nose at the banks. Or, to use the technical term, P2P threatened to “disintermediate” mainstream finance, in a democratic way.

令P2P听起来更加激动人心的是——至少在2008年经济危机之后的一段时期里——这些平台似乎也对银行嗤之以鼻。或者，用专业术语来说，P2P以民主的方式威胁着将主流金融“去中介化”。

But that utopian ideal is starting to be turned upside down. True, if you look at the profile of who is providing loans on America’s biggest P2P platforms today, such as Lending Club and Prosper Marketplace, you will still see wealthy “mom and pop” investors, attracted by the hope of good returns in a low interest rate world. Since 2009 loans on the big P2P platforms have generated yields of between 5 and 9 per cent.

但是现在，这种不切实际的想法即将被颠覆。没错，如果看看美国各大P2P平台上——如Lending Club和Prosper Marketplace——贷款方的介绍，你还是会看到富有的“夫妻店”投资者——在当今的低利率时代，对高回报率的期待把他们吸引到互联网平台上。自2009年以来，大型P2P平台贷款产生的收益率在5%至9%之间。

But those plucky individuals are in a minority — and a shrinking one. These days, four-fifths of the finance on P2P platforms [all of them? says just Lending Club in source i can find our story dated December 14.2014]comes from institutions, such as hedge funds, or arms of the established banks.

但是，大胆的个人投资者毕竟是少数——而且越来越少。如今，P2P平台上五分之四的资金来自机构，如对冲基金，或者老牌银行的分支。

Indeed, hedge funds and banks are now moving into this sector with such a vengeance that they are not only repackaging those P2P loans into new instruments, via securitisation; they are lending via these platforms too.

的确，对冲基金和银行正在大张旗鼓地进入P2P领域——不仅通过证券化把P2P贷款重新包装为新的金融工具，还通过这些平台从事贷款业务。

Earlier this year, for example, Citigroup agreed a $150m tie-up with Lending Club, to finance loans. Citizens Bank has bought $200m of loans from SoFi, a big student loan-focused marketplace lender, and committed to buy $300m more. Instead of thumbing their nose at banks, in other words, P2P lenders are co-opting them, if not being co-opted too. In financial terms, this is like Uber quietly cutting deals with established taxi companies.

例如，今年早些时候，花旗集团(Citigroup)与Lending Club签署一项价值1.5亿美元的贷款融资合作协议。美国国民银行(Citizens Bank)从专注学生贷款市场的大型网贷平台SoFi购买了2亿美元贷款，并承诺再购买3亿美元。换句话说，P2P贷款平台非但没有对银行嗤之以鼻，反而要么拉拢银行、要么被银行拉拢。这就好比Uber与出租车公司悄然达成协议。

Does this matter? The answer to that question depends on what you think the main priority for modern finance should be. If you think that the system needs to provide more credit to the economy, in order to to boost growth, this quiet transformation should seem welcome.

这有关系吗？答案取决于你对现代金融的首要任务怎么看。如果你认为金融体系需要为经济提供更多信贷以刺激增长的话，这种悄然转变似乎应该受到欢迎。

After all, the arrival of banks and hedge funds will enable the sector to expand more rapidly. And borrower demand seems sky high; PwC predicts that P2P lending will swell to $150bn by 2025, from $5.5bn in 2014.

毕竟，银行和对冲基金进入有利于该行业更快扩张。而且借款人的需求似乎非常旺盛；普华永道(PwC)预计，到2025年，P2P网贷规模将由2014年的55亿美元暴增至1500亿美元。

But if you think that the main goal of finance should be to create safe, clear rules for capital flows, then this pattern might also make you weep. If you ask bankers why they are moving into P2P lending, some will point to the high returns they hope to earn (since the average loan commands an interest rate of around 13 per cent, margins are high). Others will cite the need for banks to copy clever technology ideas and become more entrepreneurial.

但是，如果你认为金融业的主要目标应该是为资金流动制定安全、明确的规则，那么这种模式或许会让你失望。如果你问银行家为什么要进入P2P网贷行业，一些人会说想要获得高回报（因为平均而言贷款的利率为13%左右，息差很高）。其他人会称，银行需要学习聪明的技术理念并更具创业精神。

But there is another, grubbier motive: regulatory arbitrage. “We like P2P because we can do things there that we can’t do in our main bank,” as a senior New York banker recently (and sheepishly) explained at a conference.

但是，还有另外一个更卑鄙的动机：监管套利。“我们喜欢P2P，因为我们在那里可以做一些我们在银行没法做的事，”纽约一名银行高管最近在一次会议上（带点不好意思地）解释称。

Sharp-eyed readers might feel a sense of déjà vu. The idea of using innovations to dance around tough capital rules is hardly new: in the early years of the past decade, banks used structured investment vehicles and collateralised debt obligations in the same way.

眼尖的读者或许会有一种似曾相识的感觉。利用创新在严格的资本规则下打擦边球的想法并不新鲜：在过去十年的头几年，银行以相同方式利用结构化投资工具和债务抵押债券(CDO)来规避监管。

They also took advantage of cracks in regulatory structures to create products that policymakers could not easily monitor or control (it was unclear, for instance, who was supposed to oversee mortgage derivatives).

它们还利用监管结构中的漏洞，创造了政策制定者不易监管或控制的产品（抵押贷款衍生品由谁监管在那时并不明确）。

A sense of fragmentation is hampering policymakers again. And as Kara Stein, a commissioner at the US Securities and Exchange Commission, has observed: “We can’t afford a fragmented regulatory architecture.”

一种分散的感觉再次困扰政策制定者。正如美国证交会(SEC)委员卡拉斯坦(Kara Stein)所说的：“我们负担不起一个支离破碎的监管体系的后果。”

It is unclear whether the regulators’ remit covers all the upstarts.

现在尚不清楚监管部门的职责范围是否覆盖所有新平台。

Perhaps this does not matter. The P2P sector is a tiddler compared to the overall financial world (or the pile of mortgage derivatives which sowed havoc in 2008). And unlike the pension funds which were exposed to mortgage-backed securities in 2006, for example, the banks and hedge funds understand the dangers of credit losses. So even if P2P loans turn bad in the future, this should not pose wider risks.

也许这并不重要。与整个金融世界（或者引发2008年灾难的抵押贷款衍生品的规模）相比，P2P行业就像一条小鱼。比如，与在2006年存在抵押贷款支持证券相关敞口的养老基金不同，银行和对冲基金知道信贷损失的危险。因此，即使P2P贷款在未来变成坏账，也不会构成更大范围的风险。

Nevertheless, history suggests that whenever innovation and regulatory arbitrage are combined in an era of ultra cheap money, it often ends in tears — somewhere. If nothing else, that suggests that policymakers need to find ways to stop activity falling between the regulatory cracks; not least because financiers are endlessly creative at dancing in those gaps.

尽管如此，历史表明，在资金极其廉价的时代，一旦创新和监管套利结合在一起，通常会以眼泪收场——在某个地方。这至少表明，政策制定者必须想办法阻止某些活动偷偷钻了监管漏洞；尤其是因为金融家在钻空子方面拥有无限的创造力。