We investigate the payback performance of small businesses’ funded loans, and its determinants, in the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending crowdfunding market. We do so by analysing a dataset of 1000 small businesses’ unsecured funded loans, via the American online P2P lending funding website Prosper.com. As these loans are unsecured, interest rates are relatively high (18.5% on average in our data base). As a result, payback is by no means straightforward. Indeed, we find 27% of all funded loans in our sample to default. Hence, it is particularly important in this market to know which factors determine payback performance. A novelty of our paper is that we are able to distinguish empirically between new and established firms in this market. Our results highlight that also in P2P lending, borrower reputation — stipulated by credit grade and repayment history — continues to be the single most dominant determinant of payback over loan default, especially for established firms. However, in contrast to conventional financing theory, we found that borrowers’ credit grade is only weakly relevant in determining risks of default of new businesses and that new firms are not more likely to default when compared to established firms. Selection effects may play a role here, in that only high-risk established firms look for unsecured online P2P finance as they are more likely than lower risk established firms to have been unable to get finance in the more traditional markets. This suggests that the liability of newness does not hold in this market. Nevertheless, among new firms, and in contrast to established firms, inclusion of a picture in the loan application was found to be an additional quality signal, positively associated with payback performance. This suggests the importance of visual information as a means of reducing uncertainty and signalling lower risk to financiers.

我们调查了点对点 (P2P) 借贷众筹市场中小型企业融资贷款的偿还绩效及其决定因素。为此，我们通过美国在线 P2P 借贷融资网站Prosper.com分析了 1000 家小企业无担保融资贷款的数据集。由于这些贷款无抵押，利率相对较高（我们数据库中的平均利率为 18.5%）。因此，回报绝非易事。事实上，我们发现样本中所有资助贷款中有 27% 存在违约。因此，在这个市场中，了解哪些因素决定投资回报率尤为重要。我们论文的新颖之处在于，我们能够凭经验区分这个市场上的新公司和老牌公司。我们的研究结果强调，在 P2P 借贷中，借款人的声誉（由信用等级和还款历史规定）仍然是贷款违约偿还的唯一最主要的决定因素，特别是对于老牌公司而言。然而，与传统融资理论相反，我们发现借款人的信用等级在确定新企业违约风险方面的相关性较弱，而且与老企业相比，新企业违约的可能性并不更大。选择效应可能在这里发挥作用，因为只有高风险的老牌公司才会寻找无担保的在线 P2P融资，因为它们比风险较低的老牌公司更有可能无法在更传统的市场获得融资。这表明，新事物的责任在这个市场上并不成立。然而，在新公司中，与老牌公司相比，在贷款申请中包含图片被发现是一个额外的质量信号，与投资回收绩效呈正相关。这表明视觉信息作为减少不确定性并向金融家发出较低风险信号的手段的重要性。