New Zealand's non-banking sector feels there is a possible threat of disruption with a new player entering the market and having an impact on the incumbents.
Already there have been examples in industries such as retail and insurance where a disrupter has been able to come in and shake up the marketplace.
KPMG head of financial services John Kensington said where, when and how a disrupter might manifest itself within the industry was still unclear.
But non-banking executives agreed it would probably come from someone who had access to customer and data information and had the ability to use the data.
One operator everyone was aware of and who was operating on the fringes was Harmoney, which was issued the first licence by the Financial Markets Authority to conduct peer-to-peer lending (P2P) under the Financial Markets Contracts Act, he said.
P2P allowed for the lending of money between unrelated individuals, often online through the platforms of peer-to-peer lending companies.
In a typical scenario, an investor would deposit cash with the P2P lending company. The deposit would then be broken up to into many small blocks and lent out to many borrowers in an effort to diversify the credit risk of the investor.
The impact of P2P lending on the more traditional banks and lending institutions was not immediately clear, but P2P appeared to be growing overseas and the credibility of the market might be further improved by the implementation of regulation, Mr Kensington said.
