A report in China News says there was a “surge in problematic peer to peer online lending” during 2015 and 2016. Referencing financial news portal Finance.ifeng.com, the report said there were 478,000 cases at the end of January of individual investors filing complaints against problematic peer to peer lending platforms. This number would be about 4.5% of the total peer to peer lending investors in China. Problematic platforms were pegged at 1,300 in 2016. Approximately 64 platforms were either suspended or reported problems last month alone. Three platforms had managers that simply disappeared.
Peer to peer platforms peaked in mid-2016 around the same time government officials were starting to crack down on the wild-east sector of finance.
The report also said there were 2,388 platforms in good standing in January, down 60 from December. A total of 221 billion yuan or $32.2 billion USD in transactions were processed in January. China is home to the largest online lending market in the world.