Benjamin Franklin, one of the US founding fathers, wrote that, “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”. To those one could add a third, which is equally inevitable: the credit cycle.
People who are only allowed to borrow when money is easy may default on their loans when times get tougher. This principle has brought banks low for centuries and it has now struck fintech, the blend of finance and technology that was supposed to be cleverer and more efficient than them.
As of Monday, when Renaud Laplancheresigned as chief executive of Lending Club, the US online lending platform, it does not look quite like that. Marketplace lending, the industry formerly known as peer-to-peer lending, now seems more fragile than banking. With the first sign of trouble from higher loan defaults, the hedge funds on which it came to rely took fright.