Anything Donald Trump does engenders a certain revolution. There’s no better sign of over exploitation of a concept or business than when the Donald gets involved.
Last week, the Donald did his thing on crowdfunding with the launch of FundAnything, a crowdfunding venture of, well, anything. His partner on the venture, Bill Zanker, told AllThingsD that FundAnything was absolutely a Kickstarter knockoff. Said Zanker: “What I’m trying to do is bring crowdfunding away from the Brooklyn hipsters and bring it to the masses.”
Better get something for the ensuing nausea.
While it might be easy to think the Donald has soiled crowdfunding forever, that would be a mistake. Crowdfunding — as a business model — holds special promise for banks.
First, the basics. Crowdfunding is the collective effort of individuals who network and pool their money, usually via the internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations. Kickstarter is the paradigmatic crowdfunding venture, raising money for all sorts of endeavors that aim to make movies, comic books or even designer chairs. However, there are now dozens of crowdfunding ventures being launched every month.
Crowdfunding contains two unique elements for banks. First, crowdfunding allows for the offsetting of risk in a way not seen since the advent of securitization. In securitization, risk is offloaded largely to professional investors. In crowdfunding, risk is offloaded to individuals — on a mass scale. Crowdfunding represents risk management of a whole other ilk and scope. And since banks are risk management enterprises, crowdfunding deserves their notice, particularly for commercial finance. My point is the theory of crowdfunding can be widely applied to banking.
Second, while crowdfunding is risk management wonder, it is also a potential vehicle for engagement with customers — something banks are notoriously bad at. It is one thing to communicate with customers; it is a whole other to involve them. Crowdfunding potentially allows for the “involvement” of bank customers. (This is one of the attractions of SmartyPig, parenthetically. SmartyPig fosters engagement from savings initiatives.)
How can banks apply crowdfunding? There are a myriad of ways, but they center of the notion of inclusion of the “crowd” in various endeavors. And lest bankers worry about regulatory compliance, consider that the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act was intended to make crowdfunding easier. While rules related to the JOBS Act remain unwritten, the expectation is crowdfunding will be made easier by the legislation.
The potential of crowdfunding is to do no less than revolutionize bank risk management in much the same way securitization did in the 1980s and 1990s. Even Donald Trump won’t ruin that.