Coming soon to an exchange-traded fund near you … an investment vehicle centered on financial services disruptors. Or so hopes the two British companies who’ve constructed the Liberum AltFi Financial Disruptors Index (Lafdi).

The index, which officially opened for business on October 1 and is in search of an ETF partner, is billed as the world’s first equity index tracking a group of companies labeled as financial service disruptors. This comprises subsectors within the financial services umbrella such as peer-to-peer (P2P) and direct lending, alternative financial services and related fintech businesses.

In short, these 28 publicly traded companies represent the vanguard of companies best-positioned to fund the growth of small businesses that are engines of innovation and jobs growth, and which are essentially ignored by large, traditional banks.

“It speaks to a bigger story in that these disruptors will use technology in innovative ways to upend the traditional lending model,” says David Stevenson, head of marketing for AltFi Data, a London-based data provider focused on the alternative finance space.

AltFi Date created the Lafdi index along with Liberum, a pan-European investment bank with offices in London and New York.

Currently, the index is heavy on U.S. and U.K. companies. “We regard it very much as a trans-Atlantic, Anglo-Saxon index,” Stevenson says. “We think the most growth will probably come from the American market, not the U.K. market. That reflects how the American stock market is better at dealing with new businesses and sectors as opposed to the U.K. market, which tends to be more traditional and conservative. If you’re a disruptor in any form, you’re more likely to be listed in the U.S.”

He highlighted a couple of index holdings that symbolize the lending disruptor model. Trust Buddy International AB, a Stockholm-based company, claims to be the biggest P2P short-term loan lender in the world. It has harnessed social media to lend small amounts of money for short periods to younger people, mainly younger women ages 25 to 35.

Another holding, London-based Tungsten Corp. PLC, addresses the problem many small businesses have with funding their invoices, which can lead to supply chain snafus. Its solution is a global e-invoicing network involving both suppliers and large corporate and governmental buyer groups. Tungsten makes money from the initial setup fee, annual subscription fees and transaction fees.

Lafdi is a quant-based model that’s tier-weighted on a liquidity and float market-cap-rank basis. It sports a backdated compound annual growth rate of 38.3% since October 2011. Sounds impressive (as far as backdating goes), but Stevenson acknowledges that any ETF that ultimately tracks this index could be volatile.

“To be honest, these are high-beta stocks, and this is a growth-stock index,” he says. “These are specialist financial stocks, which means they’re susceptible to the business cycle.”

Stevenson and members of the Lafdi team were in New York early last month meeting with ETF providers and touting the upside potential for this category of financial disruptors.

“We’re very hopeful we’ll have an ETF in some form within the next 12 months,” he says.