7 Surprising Facts From The Latest Americas Alternative Finance Industry Report

Alternative lending has expanded into many countries, being funded by individual investors, institutional investors and businesses. The 2017 Americas Alternative Finance Industry Report is a collaborative report surveying 273 country-specific platforms.

The report discusses market size and growth as well as emerging sectors in alternative lending. We’ll focus on parts of the United States and some general observances from the Americas.

1. In the U.S., 44% of alternative lending originators have introduced a different kind of product and/or service.

32% of U.S. alternative lending originators indicated a slight alteration to their core business model in 2016.

2. P2P Real Estate Lending has seen a growth of 257% in over 3 years.

In 2015, this segment generated \$782.6 million. In 2016 the number of investments increased by 34% which totaled $1.1 billion. It represents 3% of the alternative lending space.

3. 209 platforms in the Americas became inactive in the past 3 years.

The 3-year span consists of results from 2017. An earlier report does not state this metric for comparison.

4. 218,188 businesses in the Americas have used alternative financing totaling \$9.2 billion in 2016.

Businesses that use alternative financing are predominantly in Canada and Latin American countries than in the United States.

5. Only 1% of investors did not use automated investing tools for P2P Consumer Lending.

In 2016, 99% of P2P investors were using an auto-bid process.

6. 36% of P2P Consumer Lending investors were women in 2016.

The earlier report based finding from 2015 and observed only 20% of investors on P2P Consumer Lending platforms were women. Also, women make up 35% of Real Estate Crowdfunding investors. There is no comparison metric for the Real Estate Crowdfunding model from the earlier report.

7. Overall regional market volume grew by 23% at \$35.2 billion in 2016.

Reportedly $28.7 billion in 2015. Latin American countries have seen a phenomenal growth from 2015 to 2016 which attributes to the increase, as the regional market volumes pertain to the Americas.

[Images located on pg. 26, 53, 59, & 61; 2017 Americas Alternative Finance Industry Report]

Interested in reading the full report? Download a copy here.