By opening its loan book in full this will allow full transparency and provide third parties the ability to analyse Zopa’s entire nine year loan book. It is a move aimed to drive greater transparency amongst the P2P industry and demonstrates Zopa has nothing to hide as a platform regarding its credit risk and the loans it has approved.

Zopa is initially partnering with AltFi Data but will soon be making its loan book available to the general public to download and analyse in Q1 of 2015.

Zopa plans on providing a dedicated loan book page online, providing key information about the platform’s previous and outstanding loans in a move to encourage complete transparency within the P2P industry.

Data will include loan amounts, postcode breakdowns, interest rates, credit markets, default rates, current loan book size, outstanding amounts as well as Safeguard fund details.

As the world’s first P2P platform, Zopa has been a key driver of openness and transparency and is keen to ensure that the industry continues to drive greater transparency through responsible lending. Zopa is calling on all P2PFA members to follow its lead by making their platform’s loan books available to download to their customers.

Giles Andrews, Zopa’s CEO and co-founder said, “As the spotlight on the P2P industry gets brighter and bigger, we have to be completely transparent with our lenders about our loan book. We believe being open about our data and taking a nothing to hide approach can only be a positive step forward. I’m calling on our peers in the industry to follow us and open up their loan books to help create an industry standard of openness.”

Sam Griffiths, AltFi Data’s MD added, “This is an exciting development for the peer-to-peer lending sector. We applaud Zopa’s commitment to transparency and see this kind of openness as a crucial stepping-stone in the maturation of the peer-to-peer lending industry. Investors of all shapes and sizes need absolute clarity about the risks and rewards of putting money to work on P2P platforms in order to make informed investment decisions. Transparency is an absolute must for this growing industry as it seeks to build trust and transform the financial services sector. Data needs to be granular and detailed and we also believe it must be subjected to rigorous peer group and cross asset class analysis, which is where AltFi Data comes in."