Crowdfinance in Context of Corporate Finance

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 2,3, University of Applied Sciences Essen, language: English, abstract: Many companies transact their business processes online to enhance their effectiveness and productivity. The entire business concept of some enterprises is based on the worldwide data network. Also financial matters are more and more solved online. Bank customers are well informed by the Internet and willing to make use of different financial services of different providers simultaneously. This willingness is supported by the comparability of financial services in blogs, forums or social networks.

The services of traditional banks did not develop significantly during the last years. In contrast to this there are remarkable changes in macroeconomical, political and social surrounding conditions. Those affect the banks in a sustainable way and offer new competitors market access. Especially the availability of technology have an effect on the business activities of credit institutions, that transfer innovations only partial in turn. Simultaneously costumers show increasing experience and affinity with the handling of technology based financial services. Due to this they get a quick and easy access to information that is not available in analogue environment in that extent.

Crowdfinance has a great importance in this development. It is an alternative form of financing online, mostly for small to medium scale capital sums. Generally there is a project or business funded by a plurality of persons. The roots of crowdfinance are found in the generic category of crowdsourcing, which focus is on working with creative ideas and approaches of the crowd. Although the main features of crowdfinance go far back into the past, the subject matter moves closer into the public focus since only a few years. A reason for this popularity is amongst others the dispersion of social networks like Facebook, Twitter and innumerable blogs. By its ability to link the users among each other the Internet offers new and variegated possible applications to finance project ideas. In addition, the missing fulfilment of financing demand for small to medium scale capital sums1 as well as increasing uncertainness in international capital markets play a major role.