In the credit drought left by the 2008 financial crisis, startups specializing in financial services technology (fintech) have arrived in a downpour, each with different means towards the same end: to disrupt the current banking model. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in lending. Beginning in 2005 with UK-based Zopa and culminating last year in Lending Club’s soaring public exit, the online lending marketplace entered this year on a Gold Rush high. But even though its roots are in the model of “peer-to-peer lending,” simply defined as the practice of one individual or institution lending to another without traditional intermediaries (mainly banks), the ecosystem of next-gen lenders today is sprouting a number of niches. One of those niches is student loan refinancing and, more recently, mortgages.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/truebridge/2015/04/15/big-industries-and-their-tech-disruptors/