For the first time, the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance has consolidated its annual regional reports to produce one global benchmarking report, with the intention of presenting world-wide online alternative finance data for 2018.This report presents the key findings from the CCAF annual global survey of online alternative finance. In all, 1,227 unique firms contributed to this study, providing 2,322 firm-level observations globally. Investigating in crowdfunding, P2P/marketplace lending or related capital raising activities, the study shows that 47 per cent of the firms were operating in two or more countries or jurisdictions.Highlights from the reportIn 2018, the global alternative finance industry facilitated USD $304.5 billion in transaction volume. This global alternative finance volume is representative of funds that were raised via an online alternative finance platform for consumers, business and other fundraisers. This volume represents a 27 per cent annual decline against the $419 billion recorded in 2017. However, this drop in global volume stems primarily from a sharp decline in alternative finance activities in China. Excluding the Chinese market, the global alternative finance market volume actually grew by 48 per cent year-on-year, from the $60 billion in 2017 to $89 billion In 2018.China had the largest alternative finance volume by country, having generated a total of $215.37 billion in 2018. The United States ($61 billion) and the United Kingdom ($10.4 billion) came in second and third respectively. In 2018, five additional countries surpassed the $1 billion threshold of alternative finance market volume including the Netherlands ($1.8 billion), Indonesia ($1.45 billion), Germany ($1.27 billion), Australia ($1.16 billion) and Japan ($1.07 billion).In 2018, online alternative business funding for start-ups and SMEs accounted for $82 billion, which fell by almost half from the high of $153 billion recorded in 2017. Much like the global total market volume, this significant reduction in alternative business funding was largely due to the sharp decline in business focused funding activity in China. Excluding China, global business funding through alternative channels increased from the $21 billion in 2017 to $31 billion in 2018. This represented a 47 per cent annual increase against the previous year.Approximately $162 billion of alternative finance volumes directly stem from funding provided by institutional investors such as banks, pension funds, mutual funds and family offices. With the involvement of institutional investors on the rise, most regions were fairly equally split, with roughly 50 per cent of funding coming from the institutions and rest provided by retail investors
