Lending Club and Funding Circle do not want to replace banks — they want to work with them.

Marketplace lenders such as Lending Club and Funding Circle are often cited as threats to the very existence of banks, but to hear them tell it, they’re more interested in partnering with banks in pursuit of shared goals than sinking them.

Last week at Bank Innovation 2015 in Seattle, Funding Circle Managing Director Sam Hodges and Lending Club Vice President and Head of Institutional Lending Andrew Deringer discussed how banks were integral to their growth plans. They were joined on stage by Emmanuel Marot, CEO of LendingRobot, and Vince Passione, CEO of LendKey, in a discussion centering on the future of alternative lending.

Though peer-to-peer lending, increasingly referred to as marketplace lending, is built on investors’ desire for a return in a low-interest-rate environment, it is borrowers’ demand for credit, arising in the vacuum left by banks exiting the small-dollar personal and small-business loan space, that powers the market. One of the most common reasons for a personal loan from Lending Club, for example, is to consolidate credit card debt. Credit cards from big banks often took the place of personal loans from small banks, which had dried up.

Lending Club’s Deringer said that his company was working with banks on a private-label basis. “Lending Club has been able to cut costs and fees out of the system,” he said. “Our use of technology allows us to reduce the cost of originations.”

Lending Club’s underwriting model and sophisticated tech stack allow it to lend more broadly and inexpensively than banks, and banks are starting to take notice. Deringer’s role is to interface with FIs and see how Lending Club might be able to work with them. “We’re still viewed as a new player by banks,” Deringer said, “but some of them see the change coming and want to work together.”

Marketplace lenders face their own challenge, said Marot of LendingRobot, which is finding borrowers. This is where banks can help.

Deringer also said that Lending Club was looking to broaden the types of loans it offers on its platform both as a lure for investors and a sensible business play, as many markets and niches are underserved and lack access to credit.

Hodges of Funding Circle also said his company was actively looking to partner with banks. Funding Circle’s target bank is a smaller institution that has gotten away from small-business lending, but wants to get back in. Funding Circle, much like Lending Club in the personal loan space, is able to originate small-dollar loans and serve customers more efficiently than banks. The company began in the U.K., but now has more employees in its U.S. office, located, like Lending Club, in San Francisco.

“We’re marketing to find borrowers and make partnerships,” Hodges said. He mentioned that a few “large depositors” had funneled loans to Funding Circle and that the company was in partnership talks with “dozens” of financial institutions.

The cooperation of nonbank financial services companies with banks was a major theme at Bank Innovation 2015. Not only are the nonbanks looking to partner up with banks, but the banks appear increasingly willing to listen.