A Data-Analytics Approach for Risk Evaluation in Peer-to-Peer Lending Platforms

The goal of this article is to investigate the roles of individual behavior characteristics and Internet finance industry risk in the light of bank run theory for P2P. We know that risk evaluation is clearly important for peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms in China, as during the last two years, the industry has experienced thousands of platform crashes. Traditional approaches to evaluate enterprise risk are increasingly ineffective in this industry, due to the difficulty of assessing the real information. In addition, the Internet business model makes it possible to record new kinds of information. By applying a data-driven analytics method, we build an intelligent risk evaluation model for P2P platforms that have comparable targeting platforms. The case study shows that our risk evaluation method can generate early warning signals regarding platform or industry risk, which is able to provide effective supporting for P2P business in practice.