According to Jeremy Gutsche, the man behind Trendhunter.com, one of the key financial trends of 2008 will be the growth of person-to-person lending exchanges in which borrowers and lenders come together directly on the web and cut out the banks.
A good example of the latter is CircleLending, an American firm in which Richard Branson's Virgin USA recently acquired a majority stake. Much the same model of "peer-to-peer" lending is slowly working its way into the charitable sector.
