The Crowdsourcing business model has been around for sometime now and has proven to be a good business model for independent artists to fund their projects.
Now, CivilisedMoney is trying to use the same concept to help peer-to-peer financial services in the UK.
CivilisedMoney’s was founded by Neil Crofts and Jason Scottgoal. Civilisedmoney will use people-to-people networks to create an ethical, transparent alternative to the existing financial services industry.
As they say – “It’s banking with people, not banks.”
The concept is very similar to the age old concept of a co-operative bank or a chit fund operated in India. The key difference from these models that I can think of is that this model is much more transparent and easier to operate due to their use of technology to enable these financial transactions. This will also make it easy for people to invest, donate, lend, borrow and transact money with each other directly.
This organization itself was crowd-funded to the tune of GBP 100,000 within 9 days in the on the crowncube platform.
I think the challenges for them could be the following:
- Achieving scale: Will they be to scale up. If they find out ways to continue to attract people to use their platform, this idea really has a great future and can have a big impact on the financial services sector.
- Remain a banking service provider: They need to be very careful about how they position themselves. There is a real possibility that they end-up being another platform for crowd-sourcing (like www.kickstarter.com or www.crowdcube.com or many other such platforms. They need to ensure that they continue to function like a bank, offer services like a bank and think like bankers, all within their definition of the business.
This sector is actually in need of an overhaul as we have only seen incremental changes with no major disruption. A disruption in the sector seems to be inevitable. The question is “Can civilisedmoney lead this disruption?”
I wish them continued success in this venture.
Disclosure: I have not invested in this organization and neither do I know the founders. I liked their business idea and want to spread the word.
