What’s next for alternative finance?

David Stevenson looks at how the world of alternative finance may develop for investors over the course of the year.

2015 wasn't a great year for public markets, with the vast majority of equity markets chalking up big losses. Bond investors didn't do much better, with some more specialist forms of corporate credit experiencing big losses. But 2015 was a big year for the nascent but fast growing world of alternative finance.

Some simple numbers tell the story. The total loans through the big five platforms more than doubled from £2.8bn to £5.3bn, according to numbers from AltFi Data. Crucially, the average total return on these loans (tracked through something called AltFi LARI index) increased from 5.9% in January 2015 to 6.26% at the end of the year.

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David C. Stevenson
Contributor

David Stevenson has been writing the Financial Times Adventurous Investor column for nearly 15 years and is also a regular columnist for Citywire. He writes his own widely read Adventurous Investor SubStack newsletter at davidstevenson.substack.com

David has also had a successful career as a media entrepreneur setting up the big European fintech news and event outfit www.altfi.com as well as www.etfstream.com in the asset management space. 

Before that, he was a founding partner in the Rocket Science Group, a successful corporate comms business. 

David has also written a number of books on investing, funds, ETFs, and stock picking and is currently a non-executive director on a number of stockmarket-listed funds including Gresham House Energy Storage and the Aurora Investment Trust. 

In what remains of his spare time he is a presiding justice on the Southampton magistrates bench.