Here are a few notes from Chris Larsen's Prosper Days keynote address.- Prosper provides strong loyalty and strong diversification
- Shared several success stories of prosper loans (Soldier loan consolidation, loan for a toy business, super prime home improvement loan, charity loan for needy family, and a loan from a friend)
- Prosper can improve borrower's credit
- Prosper is growing - $120,000,000 in loans and 600,000 registered members
- As he has mentioned before, lenders are avoiding subprime loans; in January 2007 subprime loans represented 24% of loans and in January 2008 they made up 5% of loans
- "Attractive" ROI loans up nearly 200%
- Prosper started giving rate guidance to borrowers and added rate tools for lenders
- Prosper now warns bidders when they are likely to get a low estimated return
- Portfolio plans were introduced this year
- Rate guidance to borrowers has significantly reduced the number of borrowers requesting "low ROI" loans and increase the "attractive ROI" listings by 250%
- Borrower requested features: schedule a date for a future payment, save listing draft to finish later, preview listing, re-use listing as template, pay loan with lending balance, have two active loans
- Lender requested features: watch list, instant transfers, better guidance on manual bidding, addition of loan categories, show community payments on group, add "4+ months late" loan status, show history of second borrowers, instant transfers, 1099's on a single statement, increase max rate to 35%
- Prosper opened a new forum and now has an official blog
- Social capital - impact of groups on default rates; small groups do better than large groups
- Endorsements from friends improved performance and rates
- Collections improved - $34,665 collected in August 2007 and $69,807 in January 2008
- Fraud prevention - first conviction for fraud
- New feature - portfolio plans can be created and shared
- Looking ahead - More lender control (tools, transparency, secondary market), growing attractive listings, credit crunch is an opportunity
Update: There was lots of blog and news coverage of the conference - ABC 7 was also there.
