Peer to Peer Lending and the Caribbean community

In the September issue I raised the question about Angel Investing. In my reading I came across an article on CNNMoney that talks about peer to peer lending. View the article here. The idea is that individuals join a network either as a lender or borrower. Borrowers are grouped by creditworthiness and the administrators of this system take funds that the lenders provide and allocate to borrowers for a small administrative fee of course. Small loans that traditional banks might not provide can be filled. Lenders get a return on their capital and borrowers often times pay a lower interest rate.

I wonder if this could work as well for our Caribbean owned small business. This would definitely help in the area of funding. The culture we share is unique enough and at times we as Caribbean folks can be distrustful and skeptical. Borrowers too will have to submit a profile according to the article and that can be a turn off we don't like our business "out on the street!" But I always maintain that we are innovative and enterprising and find ways to make things work. Perhaps with time we can marry the innovation we possess with new ways of doing business so that we can take Caribbean entrepreneurship to the next level. And perhaps something like this could work.

Email Mmaxwell.cbdigest@gmail.com to obtain the September issue of the Caribbean Business Digest.