Investing Without Traditional Intermediaries: Interview With Przemysław Paweł Januszaniec, CEO Loanch

Przemysław Paweł Januszaniec has spent more than 25 years in consumer finance, credit risk and credit operations across markets from Poland and the wider EU to Eastern Europe, South-East Asia and the US as CRO, CFO, CEO and on supervisory boards.

A good chunk of his recent experience is in Asia, where technology has opened up access to financial services and changed how credit risk gets assessed. He is genuinely enthusiastic about statistical and econometric methods in decision-making and some of his most useful lessons actually came from unusual places, like optimising workflows on a production floor and in a call centre by pairing efficiency metrics with the behavioural patterns of both clients and staff.

Loanch is a European loan marketplace that connects investors with opportunities backed by consumer loans originated in select international markets, built to solve two problems at once: investors in mature European markets often can’t easily access diversified private credit and responsible lenders in growing economies need diversified funding to expand access to finance.

Loanch is the infrastructure that connects both sides: investors pick claims tied to individual loans, originators get funding and we keep the whole thing structured, transparent and efficient.

Banks Have Long Been The Middlemen Between Depositors And Borrowers. What Has Made P2P Platforms Like Loanch Possible Today?

A few things converged: digital identity checks, electronic payments, automated servicing and data-driven credit assessment have made processing individual loans far cheaper; work that used to need branches, paperwork, and big teams can now run on digital infrastructure. Technology also lets us break loan portfolios into individual investment opportunities and give investors much more granular visibility into what they’re actually funding.

At the same time, investors have gotten comfortable managing money online and are looking past traditional savings products. Loan marketplaces meet that demand by giving direct access to a slice of private credit that used to be mostly a bank and institutional game. But technology is just the enabler, you still need solid underwriting, reliable servicing, legal enforceability, payment infrastructure and real risk discipline. Cutting out intermediaries doesn’t cut out the need for those functions.

Is This A Temporary Shift Or The Start Of A Fundamental Change In How Capital Flows Through The Economy?

I’d call it fundamental, though not necessarily the end of banks. Financial infrastructure is becoming more modular: origination, funding, payments, servicing and risk management don’t have to live under one roof anymore. Specialised players can each do one piece and connect through technology.

That can make capital allocation more efficient; investors get access to specific asset classes or geographies, lenders diversify funding instead of depending only on banks or a handful of institutional partners. Where the sector ends up depends on whether platforms can prove resilience, transparency and disciplined risk management across full economic cycles.

The ones that do become permanent fixtures; the ones chasing funding growth alone won’t build anything lasting.

Trust In Traditional Finance Came From Institutions. On A P2P Platform What Replaces That And Can Transparency Around Individual Loans Outweigh Brand Legacy?

You can’t replace trust with a dashboard or a pile of published data. It comes from transparency, consistent execution and interests that are actually aligned. Investors need to understand what they’re funding, who originates and services the loans, how repayments flow through, what happens if a borrower defaults, and what risk stays with them.

Loan-level information can actually give more visibility than a lot of traditional products but only if it’s relevant, understandable and backed by solid processes. Brand legacy still counts for something, because trust takes time. A newer platform earns it by being upfront, staying consistent, and dealing with problems head-on instead of pretending risk doesn’t exist.

At the same time, we don’t reject the traditional approach to building trust through established institutions. We’re also pursuing the relevant licenses. It’s a long and bureaucratic process, but one we intend to complete. We see this as another important layer of trust, as regulatory oversight gives users greater confidence and peace of mind when using the platform.

Without A Bank Standing Between Investor And Borrower, More Responsibility Falls On The Investor. How Does Loanch Help Investors Understand Risk Without Giving Them A False Sense Of Safety?

Simple starting point: lending involves risk, and a higher return is never the same thing as a guaranteed one.

We give investors information on each loan; term, repayment schedule, rate, status plus details on the originator and the structure behind the claim. Before any loan goes live, we assess the originator’s finances, underwriting, portfolio performance, servicing, governance and operations and we keep monitoring after onboarding, because things change.

Where a buyback obligation exists, it can soften an investor’s exposure to one delinquent borrower but it doesn’t erase the risk, since it depends on the originator’s ability to actually honour it. Our job is to give investors enough information and the right controls, while being upfront about what those protections can’t do.

With 25+ Years In Credit Risk Management, What Lessons From Traditional Finance Shaped How Loanch Assesses And Prices Risk?

Risk rarely shows up in one headline number and a low default rate on its own tells you very little without knowing about portfolio growth, underwriting changes, seasoning, customer segments, and recoveries. It also has to be tracked across the whole lifecycle: underwriting matters, but so do fraud prevention, collections, liquidity, operational controls, and how fast you react when things start slipping.

Concentration risk is another big one; a portfolio can have thousands of borrowers and still be dangerously concentrated in one originator, market, product, or funding model. And pricing needs to reflect more than expected defaults: operational, liquidity, legal, currency, and counterparty risk all belong in there too. A higher rate doesn’t automatically mean a better risk-adjusted return.

Honestly, I don’t draw a hard line between “traditional” and “modern” risk management, the interfaces have gotten a lot slicker, but the core credit-cycle logic goes back to the 60s and 70s and still holds up. I’d tell any new investor: go read some risk management writing from the late 20th century. Understanding terms like first payment default, delinquency, flow rates, score cut-offs, and net credit losses gives you a real foundation for building a strategy that fits your risk appetite.

What Is The Biggest Myth Retail Investors Have About P2P Lending Platforms?

That a buyback obligation makes an investment risk-free. It doesn’t remove the risk, it just shifts it instead of relying only on one borrower not defaulting, you’re now relying on the originator’s ability to honour the buyback.

The other common mistake: assuming lots of individual loans automatically means real diversification. True diversification also means spreading across originators, countries, products, maturities, and economic drivers.

If I had to leave investors with three lines: there’s no such thing as a risk-free investment; don’t put everything on one horse; and never use investment tools blindly.

Europe Is One Of The Most Regulated Fintech Markets In The World. How Has That Shaped Loanch’s Approach And Does Regulation Help Or Hinder Platforms Like Yours?

Regulation adds cost and complexity, no question but credible markets don’t exist without clear rules. For us, operating in Europe means real investment in customer ID checks, AML controls, sanctions screening, data protection, payment infrastructure, and getting the legal structure of each investment right.

It helps most when it’s proportionate and gives clear rules for specific business models. The tricky part is that digital finance often moves faster than the legal categories meant to describe it, so similar-looking platforms can sit under very different structures. Our approach is to work out how our activities should be treated in each jurisdiction and build accordingly. Long-term, good regulation helps serious players, it raises the bar and makes it harder to compete on marketing alone while glossing over risk.

Fintech Loves To Talk About Scalability, But Lending Platforms Need Resilience Above All. How Does Loanch Balance Growth With Protecting Investor Capital?

Growth has to follow the infrastructure’s actual capacity, not run ahead of it. That means checking not just how much volume an originator can produce, but whether their underwriting, servicing, collections, liquidity, and reporting can actually keep up.

We watch concentration limits closely too; more volume from an existing partner isn’t automatically safer than a new one if it pushes concentration too high. Operational resilience matters just as much: payments, reconciliation, data integrity, cybersecurity, business continuity all have to hold up.

No one can promise investor capital is never at risk and the goal is catching problems early, avoiding unnecessary concentration, and building processes that keep working when things get tough.

Cross-Border Investing Has Always Been Costly And Complex. How Does Loanch Make It Easier For Investors To Fund Loans Across Different Markets, And What Barriers Remain?

We give investors one digital environment to access loans from different markets; no need to set up local banking relationships, deal directly with individual lenders, or manage servicing themselves. The originator handles local borrower acquisition, underwriting, and servicing; we handle the marketplace, the investor interface, transaction records, and payment coordination.

That said, cross-border investing is still genuinely complicated legal enforceability, local regulation, tax, currency exposure, and data availability all differ by market, and you can’t standardise away economic or political risk. We reduce friction and make information more accessible, but investors should know that geographic diversification brings its own risks alongside the upside.

Are Platforms Like Loanch Competing With Banks Or Do You See A More Collaborative Future?

More collaborative than confrontational, I’d say. Banks will stay central to payments, deposits, large-scale funding, and a lot of regulated financial services. Specialised fintechs can serve segments or products that don’t fit traditional banking economics as well.

Loan marketplaces complement banks by giving lending companies alternative funding and giving investors access to a different slice of credit. I expect more cooperation ahead between banks, institutional investors, fintech lenders and marketplaces; each brings something different: banks bring infrastructure and balance sheet, fintech lenders bring specialised origination and tech, marketplaces bring access to diversified capital. The goal isn’t cutting out every intermediary it’s making sure each one earns its place.

Could AI Eventually Take Over Parts Of The Credit Assessment Process At Loanch Or Will Human Judgment Stay Central To How You Evaluate Borrowers?

AI already helps with a lot: crunching large datasets, spotting patterns that are hard to catch manually, supporting fraud detection, sharpening early-warning systems, tailoring collections. But we don’t underwrite every borrower directly. That initial call is made by the originator, using their own data and models. Our job is assessing the originator, their methodology, and the resulting portfolio.

AI helps us track portfolio trends, compare cohorts, flag unusual shifts and improve monitoring and it helps originators with their own decisioning too. But human judgment stays central, especially for governance, business models, market conditions, data quality, and situations where history just doesn’t offer much of a guide.

Accounting software never eliminated accountants. Drag-and-drop coding tools haven’t eliminated programmers. I don’t think AI will eliminate risk managers either, the strongest setup isn’t AI instead of expertise, it’s technology doing the heavy repeatable lifting alongside people who can question the assumptions, read the context, and own the decision.