The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland has taken a report on P2P lending offline due to questions regarding the report’s underlying data.
Released earlier this month, the report — which is now under revision, according to the Cleveland Fed — concluded that the P2P lending industry is similar to that of “predatory loans,” and that P2P loans could have detrimental effect on consumer finances.
Analysts and industry professionals questioned those conclusions, as well as the underlying methodology.
Groups such as the Marketplace Lending Association called for the Cleveland Fed to pull the paper “due to what we see as serious flaws in the authors’ reliance on certain underlying data,” executive director Nathaniel Hoopes wrote last week in American Banker.
The Cleveland Fed wrote on its site after pulling the report:
Since working paper no. 17-18 and related commentary on peer-to-peer lending were posted on our website on November 9, the authors have received several questions about the composition of the underlying data set they used in their analysis. In light of the comments received, the authors are currently revising their paper to further clarify the data sample they used in the study. Their revised paper will be posted as soon as it is completed.
No timetable was offered for the report’s re-release.
Read more at the Cleveland Fed, PYMNTs, Bloomberg, and American Banker.