RBI to come out with peer-to-peer lending regulations by June-July

P2P companies help facilitate loans by matching borrowers to lenders

The Reserve Bank is expected to come out by June-July with guidelines to regulate the Indian peer-to-peer (P2P) lending market.

The RBI had floated a consultation paper in April 2016 on the Indian P2P lending that has been taking roots in India.

The discussion paper is to be followed by formal guidelines for the sector, which currently is self-governed.

The borrowing-lending channel Faircent.Com, which is run by Gurugram-based Fairassets Technologies India, said the sector will grow over a period of time as more and more people become aware of this vertical.

Besides facilitating loans from its website by matching borrowers and lenders, it has also started gold loan services.

"The guidelines are expected by June or July, however, it was supposed to come out in October last year but delayed initially due to demonetisation, followed by early budget and then elections in few states," Fairassets Technologies India Founder and COO Vinay Mathews said in an interview.

At present, the status is that "it has gone from the RBI to the Ministry of Finance. The Ministry of Finance has put it out to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and they have to come back (on the subject matter)," Mathews said.

Faircent.Com, which went live in 2014, has so far facilitated lending to the tune of Rs 20 crore from its platform and set a much bigger target for the current fiscal.

"So far, we have facilitated around Rs 20 crore loans from Faircent platform. This year we are scaling, we have to do some Rs 50 crore of loans this fiscal," he added.

Next week, the company will also enter into loan against property (LAP) domain and match prospecting borrowers and lenders through Faircent.Com, Mathews said.