Global statistical research company Statista has forecast that peer-to-peer lender platforms are the future of financing, with annual transaction volume on course to climb by 80% on average over the next five years.

Statista’s Digital Market Outlook (DMO) finds that taking up ban loans is increasingly experienced by individual consumers and companies alike as bureaucratic and time-consuming. In the alternative finance space, peer-to-peer lenders (sometimes known as “crowdlenders”) have specialised in delivering user-friendly solutions: credit seekers and investors are connected directly via their digital platforms to make the business of raising money far easier, and far quicker.

The liquidity available among peer-to-peer lenders furnishes individuals and small and medium-sized enterprises with a fast and flexible means of obtaining loans that the banks and major credit institutions are, frankly, failing to keep pace with. Typically, loan applications are processed by peer-to-peer lenders in a matter of hours, or days at a maximum.

UK-based peer-to-peer lender Unbolted, for example, offers secured asset loans using high value assets owned by borrowers as security for the credit. Indicative offers are made within hours of an image of the asset being uploaded to the lender’s site. Once the platform’s expert partners have determined the value of the asset upon resale in a secondary market – a process that takes place most usually the very next day – money can be released within hours of the asset arriving at the lender’s HQ.

According to Statista, the peer-to-peer lender model has enormous potential for SMEs. The transaction volume of business-to-business lender platforms in Europe will be $3.16bn by the end of this year, whereas in the US the equivalent figure will be $8.489bn.