Financialization describes a phenomenon whereby financial markets assume an increasingly dominant role within the economy. This paper seeks to dissect the role of information and communications technology (ICT) in financialization by following a cross-disciplinary approach across finance, economics and information systems. Accordingly, we develop a general framework describing the relationship between ICT and financialization. This framework allows us to investigate the recent rise of online marketplaces for credit. Consequently, ICT is not only facilitating, but fundamentally driving a disintermediation of banks through advances in computing, communication and information technology. We also provide supporting evidence from interviews with almost 40 senior experts and C-level executives. Interestingly, only rather recent innovations have enabled the popularity of marketplace lending, such as cloud computing, big data, scalable IT infrastructures and comprehensive ecosystems of programming interfaces. In contrast, we observe a slow integration of advanced analytics in the field of risk management. Based on our analysis, the paper also discusses cross-country implications for marketplace lending, financialization and regulation.

中文翻译：

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跨越下一个前沿：信息通信技术在推动信贷金融化方面的作用

金融化描述了一种现象，即金融市场在经济中扮演着越来越重要的角色。本文试图通过跨金融、经济和信息系统的跨学科方法来剖析信息和通信技术 (ICT) 在金融化中的作用。因此，我们开发了一个描述 ICT 与金融化之间关系的一般框架。该框架使我们能够调查最近兴起的在线信贷市场。因此，信息通信技术不仅促进了银行的去中介化，而且通过计算、通信和信息技术的进步从根本上推动了银行的去中介化。我们还通过对近 40 位高级专家和 C 级高管的采访提供支持证据。有趣的是，只是最近的创新使市场借贷的流行成为可能，例如云计算、大数据、可扩展的 IT 基础设施和编程接口的综合生态系统。相比之下，我们观察到高级分析在风险管理领域的缓慢整合。根据我们的分析，本文还讨论了对市场借贷、金融化和监管的跨国影响。