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.

—

Andrew is a Product Manager at Prosper.

One of the many activities aimed at improving collections undertaken in the last couple of months was the testing and implementation of an “Early Delinquency” letter series.  Although borrowers were already receiving reminder emails and phone calls during the early delinquency period (1 -30 days past due), we thought it worth seeing if an actual letter might drive additional payments.  We conducted an initial test in mid-October where half of the early delinquency population was sent a letter and half was not.  Measured by the number of manual payments initiated, the results were good.  In the three weeks after the letter was mailed 57% more recipients initiated a manual payment (41% vs 26%).

Given this success, a two letter series was produced and a process created to automatically generate and send the letters.  The first letter goes out at 15 days past due and reminds the borrower of the “community aspect” of their prosper loan – the money comes not from a bank, but was made possible by a group of individuals.  The second letter is generated at 30 days past due and details the various consequences of becoming “delinquent” including collection activities, credit reporting and the possibility of a lawsuit.

Additionally, we have contracted with Accurint (a division of Lexis-Nexis) to provide skip tracing information and are developing an internal process around that data.

—

Doug Fuller is the Vice President of Operations at Prosper. 

The last release of 2007 was a special release… It was officially known as R103 (*we will improve the names of all future releases*). It was a short release cycle, but it was important.

First and foremost, our engineering team is world class. I appreciate each and every one for their hard work and dedication to building an amazing product.

Over the last few releases and going into 2008 we are continuing to focus on product improvements specifically a better user experience, better collections, better fraud detection, less time in post-funding verification, better customer service, and better overall site performance.

Here is a link to the release announcement.

There will be consolidated tax forms this year. That means you’ll get one form summarizing all your loans instead of one form for each loan. Who wants to do any more work for taxes then you have to?

The webservice API added a new object: Marketplace. This object makes it easy to grab summary data. As an example, it is now possible to build a featured listings rotator (hint hint!). Have you done something cool with the API? Let us know so that we can feature it on the blog.

There were a number of platform performance changes that no one will notice — they were done correctly. The most noticeable change for website users will be the speed of the Marketplace Performance Page.

Lenders now have a more detailed breakdown on the lender page for several key stats. The numbers are more thorough, which is good.

Borrower’s now have payoff guidance, increasing awareness of the effects of both early and late payments.

Also, we simplified the borrower referral by making it a $35 flat fee; making it easier to understand.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you. And here’s to hoping that 2008 is the year of P2P lending for everyone.

—

John Witchel is the CTO and Co-founder of Prosper.

Tonight we did a bunch of back-end work and made a couple of changes that you might notice…

Lender overview changes

We’ve received a lot of feedback from lenders that the “Active loan summary” box on the “Your Account > Lending” page is confusing and unclear. Furthermore, it looks like some of the items should add up, but then they don’t, which is frustrating.

We changed the data which is displayed there to simplify the display a little, and allow you to get gory details (all of your repayments can be split into principal, interest, and fees, for example) if you want to, but otherwise just see the rollup figure. You’ll also now be able to see the daily interest accrual on your loan portfolio.

Go to the lender overview now »

Borrower payoff guidance

As part of their loan detail, borrowers will now be able to see the estimated amount of their final payment, and the estimated date on which that payment will be due.

This helps increase the visibility to late borrowers of the impact of late payments (incurring late fees and insufficient funds fees) on their final loan payment. For borrowers who are paying their loan on an accelerated schedule, the due date will move forward as more and more is paid down early.

Referral program changes

We changed the referral award for new borrowers from 0.5% of the loan amount to a flat award of $35 per new borrower who gets a loan funded and makes his or her first monthly payment.

Refer your friends now »

Marketplace Performance page performance improvements

(Say that five times fast - I dare you.) There aren’t actually any changes to this page, except that you quant geeks will find it a lot snappier as you tweak criteria and reload the page for all the combinations and permutations you can stand.

Enjoy the speed: Marketplace performance page »

Tax season is coming

And we’re improving our year-end statement and tax reporting documents for when we deliver them in January. Rather than sending tax forms by snail mail (like we did last year), we’ll be delivering tax forms for most members electronically - you will be able to download a consolidated form 1099 from the “Your Account > Statements” page.

If you’re a Grinch who has already looked past Christmas to tax season, or are just a glutton for punishment, you can read more about tax reporting on Prosper. Or read the details of the electronic consolidated form 1099.

API Additions - Marketplace object

The API now includes a Marketplace object, which includes featured listings, a table of recent interest rates by credit grade and loan amount, the number of members on Prosper, and the total loan volume on Prosper.
Learn more about the API »

Those are the biggies. Enjoy the holiday season, and we’ll see you back in the new year with more improvements and changes based on your feedback.

Best regards,
Andrew

Andrew is a Product Manager at Prosper.