We made an update to the site last night to add a new feature to portfolio plans.

Prosper has updated the criteria in the templates for the Conservative, Balanced, Moderate and Aggressive portfolio plan models. This will not change the criteria of your portfolio plans; however, if you wish to alter your plan criteria to match the updated criteria, we make it convenient for you - just click the “Update” link on your list of portfolio plans.

If you have used one of the templates in the past to create a portfolio plan, you’ll see something like this in your list of portfolio plans:

You can review the new criteria, and when you click “Update”, you’ll be able to adjust the amount to bid, diversification, and/or plan criteria. Once you confirm the plan changes, all of the updated criteria will replace the previously saved criteria.

Of course, if you choose not to update your plan, the criteria will remain the same. Maybe you are happy with the criteria as they are, or you customized the plan with your own criteria, so if you want to ignore the update, just click “Ignore”, and the message will go away until the next update. For now, you’ll need to ignore each update individually as they come along.

Updates aren’t just available for the Conservative, Balanced, Moderate, and Aggressive portfolio plan models. If you copied a plan from a friend, and your friend updates the plan criteria, you’ll have the opportunity to update that plan, too.

Enjoy the updates!

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Andrew is a Product Manager at Prosper.

We’re all taught: when in polite company, don’t talk about money, sex, politics, or religion. I don’t know about the last three, but when it comes to money, people are decidedly tight-lipped. A cousin once confided in me (after a few drinks) that he’d racked up $50,000 in credit card debt. You could have knocked me over with a feather! Here’s a guy who went to college, has a good job, and seems to live a normal lifestyle. And he’s overspent enough to feed a quarter of a million children for a day.

How could I have not known this? I mean, he’s family, right? But people are very private with their money, and I would argue, without reason.

With the exception of having a mortgage, debt is looked down on in the United States. But according to CardRatings.com, 60% of Americans don’t pay off their credit card bill every month. So it’s not uncommon to carry a balance. What can set you apart from the crowd, though, is paying off your credit card balance in a smart way. That’s where Prosper comes in.                 

Okay, so you think Prosper is a cool idea, and you put up a listing. You’re really hoping that some of those lenders notice you with that picture of your cute dog and adorable kids. And maybe if you’ve got stellar credit, you will get some bids. But chances are you probably won’t.

There is something you can do about it. Tell someone. Seriously. Do it. It will help.

When you ask for a loan on Prosper, you’ll probably upload your picture, and you might write a long story about how much that kitchen remodel set you back. Or how you wrecked your car, but it was, like, totally not your fault.

And we Prosper lenders get that. We know you need a loan; otherwise you wouldn’t have jumped through Prosper’s hoops to ask for one. But we’re looking for a little commitment from you, too.

So tell someone, already. I did it, and I managed to get a great loan at an embarrassingly low interest rate.

Here are some other folks who are doing it right:

Blind Dog

No, we haven’t started making loans to canines. But this borrower has a $200 bid from a neighbor and fellow church-goer. Missmanhattan says “Mike is a neighbor and personal friend of mine.”

Paying off my credit cards

This borrower was referred to Prosper by someone who was an existing lender, and has already placed $650 in bids on the loan. By referring the borrower, Zorg (the lender) will also enjoy $50 when the borrower’s loan gets funded.

Need $$ for Spring Projects

He’s already got a $50 bid from a friend, and an endorsement from his kid (probably unverified because you have to be 18 or older to get verified). And with an estimated return of 24.61%…

So give it a try. I know it’s a little weird asking friends and family for money. But when you’re only asking them for $50, and their small bid can help you get your whole loan funded, it’s easier than you think. Heck, if you invite them to Prosper, you’ll each get $25.

So what’s stopping you? Leave a comment and let me know.

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Andrew is a Product Manager at Prosper.

Last night we released some big changes to the Prosper site.

Nationwide lending at 36% interest rate cap

After a couple years of turning away Nevadans completely and forcing Pennsylvanians to set their interest rates below 6%, we are opening up the marketplace to borrowers in almost every state of the union, with a marketplace-wide rate cap of 36%. Learn more on our new legal compliance page.

Minimum instant transfer amount lowered to $50

For lenders who install Prosper’s Facebook application, we’ve lowered the minimum transfer requirement from $500 to $50. Additionally, the maximum instant transfer amount has been raised to 50% of your active loan value.

What this means is that with as little as $100 in active loans, you can instant transfer $50 to Prosper for that “must have” loan that you just came across.

Prosper’s Facebook application keeps your Facebook friends updated on your Prosper lending activity, and is a great way to share Prosper with your friends and family.

Second loan criteria updated

The requirements for borrowers who wish to take a second loan on Prosper have changed. The new rules for whether a borrower is eligible for a second loan are dependent on the borrower’s credit grade, and the factors taken into consideration include time since last loan originated, consecutive months of on-time payments, and whether the borrower’s credit grade has dropped or not.

See the full list of eligibility requirements.

Lender servicing fee for AA changed to 1% per annum

The lender annual servicing fee for AA borrowers has changed to 1%. Listings created on or after April 15 will be subject to this new servicing fee. Learn more about fees and charges.

Listing durations standardized at 7 days

Along with some other changes to the listing creation process, we have fixed the duration of all new listings to 7 days. This change is part of a larger effort to simplify the listing creating process, and help more borrowers create fundable listings.

Your tax forms are right here

If you are a lender who owned loans in 2007 or earlier, and are eligible to receive a Consolidated Form 1099 from Prosper, your 1099 is available from the “My Account > Statements” page. Learn more about tax reporting.

There are many other changes under the covers, and some not-so under the covers. We hope you enjoy the changes, and look forward to getting your feedback.  Please leave a comment.

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Andrew is a Product Manager at Prosper.

We generally don’t like to pre-announce new features here at Prosper. But over the past few months we’ve put so much time and energy into a new feature called “Predictive Bidding” that we’re too excited to keep it under wraps any longer.

After mining our database of lender activity (don’t worry, no canaries were harmed), we detected some common patterns in lender activity before bids were placed:

• Lenders scrolling heavily on the listing page, back and forth between credit data and Q&A.
• Lenders clicking “Bid Now”, checking the estimated default, backing out, then clicking “Bid Now” again, then backing out, then sending a message to the borrower.
• Lenders reporting the listing, then asking the borrower a question, then inviting a friend to look at the listing.

In each of these patterns, the likelihood that the lender would then place a bid on the listing was upwards of 95%! In an effort to save our lenders some precious time, we decided that when we observe these patterns (among others), we should just go ahead and place a bid on the lender’s behalf. It’s kind of like a portfolio plan where the main criterion is your excitement level!

We’ll be rolling out this new “Predictive bidding” feature on April 1st. And in the following months, we look forward to extending predictive bidding with these improvements:

• Predictive Portfolio plans – lenders who run the same search more than 10 times in a week will have a portfolio plan created for the full amount of their cash balance.
• Eye tracking – using that webcam mounted on your monitor, we’ll detect when your eyes get big and excited about a juicy loan. If your account’s got $50 in it, you’re in.
• Predictive funds transfers – if your account ran out of money because of all those predictive bids, don’t worry – we’ll initiate a transfer for a fresh $500. You deserve it.

All these predictive features aren’t just for lenders, either. Based on some borrower data that is finally coming to light, we’re starting to see correlations between how a borrower fills out the registration form, and her credit grade, income level, and loan purpose. When we can predict these characteristics to 98% accuracy or better, we’ll bypass the Experian score pull, and auto-insert the income and listing description (everyone puts in $100/mo. for food anyway).

We hope these improvements to the marketplace are helpful to borrowers and lenders alike.

—

Andrew is a Product Manager at Prosper and today is April Fool’s.

Portfolio Plans for everyone

Now lenders can create their own portfolio plans, with all of the controls available in the existing portfolio plan templates. Existing standing orders have also been converted to portfolio plans, and will include estimated return data (when available) to help lenders make better lending decisions.

Additionally, lenders can now share their portfolio plans on their member page. If you think you have a great lending strategy, share your plan, and other lenders can copy it for their own use (or even tweak it if they think it needs some changes). Building (or just editing) a portfolio plan is easy, and with built-in performance data, you’ll be able to better predict the performance of your plans.

Choose a portfolio plan now>

http://www.prosper.com/lend/portfolio_plans_choose.aspx

Social criteria added to search

Ever wondered if having verified friends really makes a difference in a borrower’s default rate? Now you can find out, with four new search criteria added to advanced search, portfolio plans, and the marketplace performance page:

Bids from friends ($): Sum of highest single bids from the borrower’s friends
Bids from friends (#): Total number of bids from unique friends
Endorsements: Number of endorsements from the borrower’s verified friends
Friends: Number of verified friends the borrower has

Run an advanced search now>

http://www.prosper.com/lend/listing_advanced_search.aspx

Bidding via API

You can now bid via the API with your personal account. Each account must be activated to allow API bidding. Please send an email to APIServices@prosper.com to enable API bidding on your personal account.

We expect that developers will begin to create applications that make use of this capability; however, at this time, the terms of service on API bidding is limited to individual accounts.

Learn more about the API>

http://www.prosper.com/tools/

Bid Source available in loan list

The “Your Account > Lending > Loans” page now includes a new column called “Bid source”, which will indicate what the source of each loan was. For example, if you placed a manual bid, the “Bid source” column will say “Manual”. If a loan came from a portfolio plan, the plan will be named in that column.

This is a great way for lenders to look back at loans made in the past and determine which bidding strategies are working, and which are not.

View your loans now>

https://www.prosper.com/secure/account/lender/lender_search_loans.aspx

2nd Loan Criteria Changed

We have updated the eligibility criteria for borrowers who wish to create a listing for a 2nd loan on Prosper, raising the minimum number of recent consecutive on-time payments from 2 to 6 months. This means that a borrower who wishes to take a 2nd loan on Prosper must have had at least 6 months of consecutive on-time payments (pre-payments don’t count) before he or she is allowed to create a listing for a second loan.

Learn more about second loans>

http://www.prosper.com/help/topics/borrower-second_loan.aspx

“Bank account verified” icon retired

The “Bank account verified” icon () has been retired from the site as of this release. Initially, this icon was added to listings because having a verified bank account was the only hurdle to borrowers wishing to have their 100% funded loans originated, and a borrower’s failure to verify his or her bank account could delay the deployment of a lender’s bid. At present, however, bank account verification is just one of many verification procedures that gate a loan’s origination, and bank account verification is rarely the item that prevents origination. In addition, there are many misunderstandings among new borrowers and lenders over what the icon means, when it is activated vs. hidden, and how it affects the funding of a loan. As a result, we have decided to remove the icon from listings, search, and search results. Rest assured that no loans are originated without a borrower verifying ownership of his or her bank account.

Referral award for new borrowers raised from $35 to $50

If you refer a new borrower to Prosper whose loan is funded, you can earn $50 from Prosper. You can also still refer a lender, and both of you will earn $25 when he or she funds his or her first loan!

Learn more about the referral program>

http://www.prosper.com/referrals/

Washington DC interest rate cap raised to 24%

Prosper has raised the interest rate cap in the District of Columbia from 6% to 24%. Additionally, Arkansas, Delaware, Kentucky, and Tennessee have had interest rate caps lowered commensurate with the Fed’s lowering of interest rate indexes.

See states and licenses>

http://www.prosper.com/legal/states_and_licenses.aspx

Thanks for all of your useful and constructive feedback as we continue to improve the marketplace for borrowers and lenders. We look forward to your feedback on this latest round of changes.

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Andrew is a Product Manager at Prosper.