Inteligencia artificial, algoritmos y Big Data en los préstamos P2P

In recent years, extraordinary developments in information technologies in a progressive thrust towards digitalisation have started changing many traditional business models. In so doing, they have also started challenging the regulatory frameworks of reference. The retail financial services sector is one where financial technologies powered by sophisticated artificial intelligence and algorithms (‘Fintech’) making innovative uses of a large amount of personal data taken from unrelated sources (‘big data or ‘big data analytics’) are prominently affecting business models and markets. Peer-to-peer (‘P2P’) lending - also known with other names such as social lending or marketplace lending – is one of such new business models engaging in the provision of credit to consumers and/or small entrepreneurs that is differentiating from financing in traditional banking/credit markets. It is a digital model that has experienced rapid growth and is one of the more mature crowdfunding sub-sectors. However, unlike traditional forms of lending to consumers, P2P lending does not find explicit regulation at EU level despite posing not only the same set of problems but new challenges too. Its regulatory framework varies within the EU according to national rules of the Member States. However, not only this is inconsistent with the harmonised norms of EU credit laws for traditional credit provision. It is also at odds with the recent EU efforts to achieve a Capital Markets Union. Within this framework, the goal of the paper is to analyse one of the crucial elements contained in EU credit laws applicable to the provision of credit to consumers, i.e. responsible lending and the assessment of their creditworthiness. It analyses and conceptualises ‘responsible lending’ and ‘the creditworthiness assessment’, expanding the examination to risk-taking in finance and credit-risk analysis in the interest of lenders for the protection of their capital or investment. The underlying question is to what extent P2P lending – availing of Fintech and big data as the key of its business model – falls within the obligations of EU law and to what extent the interests of consumers and investors find protection from identified risks.