P2P Lending platforms in Malaysia: the awareness among Malaysian adults

Background: Since 2016, the Securities Commission (SC) in Malaysia has given licenses to only eleven P2P lending platforms. Such lending platforms are expected to disrupt the lending services of traditional lenders in the coming years. However, being still in their infant stages, it is essential to know the extent to which such platforms are made known to potential investors out there. This study aims to examine the awareness level of the eleven P2P lending platforms among Malaysian adults. The study also explores if past investment experience and financial knowledge would influence such awareness from Malaysian adults. Methods: A sample of 335 Malaysian individuals was used for this study. An online questionnaire was designed with three main parts: demographic, financial literacy, and P2P lending awareness. Using IBM SPSS Statistics 26, frequency, descriptive, normality, Pearson coefficients and multiple regression analyses were carried out.  Results: Although seven out of ten respondents have good knowledge in three areas of finance: compounding rate, inflation and diversification, only 14.33% had a good and excellent awareness level of P2P lending. Thus, one would expect lesser awareness about P2P lending among Malaysian adults whose financial literacy is poor or zero. Test results from multiple regression analysis suggest that past lending experiences positively affect the awareness of P2P lending in Malaysia, but not the financial literacy. Conclusions: The awareness about P2P lending among Malaysian adults is too low, despite their high level of education and financial literacy. No investing experience and not knowing any existing P2P lending in the country may be the reason for this low awareness. Therefore, for P2P lending to thrive in Malaysia, the eleven P2P lending platforms need to be promoted aggressively in various social media outlets.