Alternative finance companies such as peer-to-peer lender platforms and other sources of non-bank finance will become increasingly important for both small and large businesses in the UK, a member of the Bank of England’s rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee has predicted.

In a recent speech, Ian McCafferty, who prior to his appointment to the MPC was chief economic adviser to the employers’ group the CBI, stated that the UK was in the “early stages of some important changes to the architecture of business finance.”

Citing recent survey evidence suggesting that SMEs continue to find credit costly and hard to obtain, Mr McCafferty continued:

“Anecdotally, it does appear that many SMEs are reluctant to rely on banks as much as before the crisis, suggesting that the emergence of alternative sources of SME funding in recent years may well prove a lasting development.”

Large businesses, however, were facing “very favourable financing conditions”, he said, with by far the biggest majority of Chief Financial Officers reporting in the most recent credit survey by Deloitte that credit for the big players was “cheap to obtain” in the UK.

Mr McCafferty did not mention lending to individuals in his speech, although this too is a demographic that some peer-to-peer lender platforms are appealing directly to. London-based p2p platform Unbolted, for example, does not expose its individual and SME applicants to the risks of intrusive credit searches which may harm their credit scores. Instead, it offers unique, secured asset loans based on a valuable asset owned by the applicant, which is collateralised as security for the loan.