According to OpenSourceCU, a blog operated by website designer Trabian, person-to-person lender Zopa is actively soliciting credit unions to partner with the U.S. version of its service scheduled to open later this year (see NB Sep 7). One idea floated by Zopa's Wade Lagrone to attendees of the Taps Lending Symposium put on by Forum Solutions, was requiring Zopa borrowers to join a credit union in order to participate.

It's not as far-fetched as it sounds. In our analysis of peer-to-peer lending published in March (see Online Banking Report #127), we identified a number of ways financial institutions could benefit by referring customers to competitive loan marketplaces. It helps you serve the "long tail" of borrowing, those specific situations that your underwriting cannot accommodate, but where you still want to satisfy the customer to retain their other banking business.