Meet the latest way to get or to give a loan

Need a loan? Like everything these days start with the internet. The category is called “Social Lending”. Social Lending is a smarter, fairer and more human way of finding a loan. It's like borrowing money and giving loans to your friends and family - except there is no limit to the number of people you can lend and borrow with.

Both lenders and borrowers get better rates, because Social Lending is more efficient than the traditional banking model. Banks have massive overheads, with thousands of employees to pay and hundreds of branches to maintain. So they have to take large margins on the money that they give out as loans.

“Zopa” is an online marketplace where people meet to lend and borrow and has huge cost advantages, meaning that Zopa members get a fairer deal when it comes to their money. Zopa was the world's first lending and borrowing marketplace. By demonstrating that Social Lending works on a large scale, Zopa has changed the financial sector for good.

In Zopa's wake, copycat loan sites – such as Prosper in the US, Smava in Germany and Boober in the Netherlands, have sprung up across the world and more will mushroom around the world, making social Lending a financial category of genuine and increasing importance.