The group's latest offering looks to increase investors' and advisors' confidence in the peer-to-peer lending market.

An analytics firm that provides services to the UK peer-to-peer lending market has launched a new platform that aims to help users benchmark unconventional investment opportunities. 

Orca says its new offering allows advisors and investors to perform in-depth due diligence on P2P investments, benchmark them like a traditional asset class, and subsequently make risk-adjusted and informed decisions.

The platform offers P2P investment and market data on interest rates, default rates and bad debt rates, for example, and then marries these figures with analysis and context so users can interpret the information effectively, Orca says. 

The P2P market has seen significant growth in the past two years, and last year increased by 40 per cent, according to Orca. In response to this burgeoning space - which Orca forecasts to have more than 2.5 million investors by 2020 – its new platform seeks to boost advisors' and investors' confidence in the market.

“Although P2P investments offer stable, predictable risk-adjusted returns and great diversification for investors, there has been virtually no uptake since financial advisors were permitted to suggest their clients consider P2P products last year,” said Iain Niblock, chief executive of Orca. “This is because the risks are often relatively misunderstood, and investors and financial advisors alike do not have the tools and information to feel confident about P2P investments.
 
“The provision of independent research from a credible source is of critical importance if the P2P market is going to achieve its full potential. Our platform therefore aims to provide compliant, credible and robust P2P data and analytics, similarly to what’s available for equity or fixed income investments, to empower investors and financial advisors when opting for P2P.”

To read a recent guest article on the topic of P2P lending penned by Niblock, click here.