Research On The Intermediary Functions Of Online Peer-to-Peer Lending Platform

Online peer-to-peer lending(P2P) is an innovative financial services pattern which private individuals do the loan origination procession through online platforms and the financial institutions just operate as intermediates required by law. By virtue of its high efficiency and conciseness, P2P lending platform has developed rapidly from the date of birth in the world, demonstrating the strong vitality. The appearance of P2P lending platforms has effectively reduced the financing difficulties of SMEs(small and medium-sized enterprises) and individuals in a certain extent, and also put forward higher requirements to regulators and financial institutions, speeding up the changes of financial competition. And correctly justifying the economic status of P2P lending platform can effectively resolve the current controversy whether P2P lending platform should be vigorously developed. This paper gives a comprehensive overview of the basic situation and development prospects of the P2P lending market, and also explores its basic operation principle. After the research of intermediary mode of P2P lending platform, I derived its intermediary function. Then I used financial theory to further explain its intermediary function to illustrate the rationality and necessity of the P2P lending platform. On this basis, I made a field survey of Daibang and got a further understanding of the subject, and also put forward some construction suggestions. The biggest characteristic of this article is explaining the rationality and necessity of the existence of the P2P lending platform on the basis of the theory of financial intermediation.In the analysis of cost saving function, I used the Transaction Cost Theory to analyze the P2P’s beforehand and ex post transaction costs; in the analysis of risk transfer function, based on the financial theory, I established models to explain risk transfer function from different perspectives, and finally I draw the conclusion:the P2P lending platform is rational, and the market has the need to support its development.