Prosper Archives - Page 20 of 22

Prosper Helps Borrowers Tap the Value of Their "Social Capital"

By Jim Bruene Posted on February 25, 2008
Categories: P2P Lending, Prosper, Social Networks

This morning I was at the Parc55 Hotel in San Francisco to hear Prosper CEO Chris Larsen's "state of the union" address at his company's annual user meeting, Prosper Days. I've heard him speak four times in the past year, and I learn something important every time (see note 1).

The highlight today was an analysis he unveiled showing the performance of loans made to borrowers who've been endorsed by friends and family. About a year ago, Prosper added an important social networking feature that allows friends and family of potential borrowers to post endorsements. Even more important, Prosper shows whether the friend has put their money where their mouth is and made a bid on the loan (see screenshot below; note green number in upper right showing the amount of the bid made by the endorsing friend).

Analysis
The theory is that the social endorsement(s) will have two important benefits:

Help lenders identify quality borrowers
Provide borrowers with more incentive to repay the loan so as not to disappoint their endorsing friends

The first year's worth of data are in and the results are promising. The loans with higher social capital (i.e. endorsed by and bid on by friends) are performing significantly better so far:

Loans with a single friend bidding on the loan are performing 35% better than similar loans without that endorsement
Loans with multiple friends bidding are performing 50% better

Because Prosper makes its loan performance data public, investors will be able to track the value of these endorsements over time. If it turns out that endorsements do correlate with better long-term loan performance, loan rates will be bid down accordingly, and the borrower will capture the value of their social capital/reputation through lower loan rates. Already, the rates to these endorsed borrowers are running 10% lower.

Lenders can even search on these so-called "social elements." Prosper's advanced search includes 43 searchable fields, four in the social area (see screenshot below).

Note:

1. Prosper will be demo'ing their latest platform improvements at our upcoming FINOVATE Startup conference (previous coverage here).

2. For more information on Prosper and person-to-person lending, see our Online Banking Report, published in December.

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Prosper Increases its Loan Fee by 100%

By Jim Bruene Posted on January 7, 2008
Categories: Loans & Credit, P2P Lending, Pricing, Prosper

As noted in our recent research report on the P2P lending market (here), the exchanges need to boost revenues to remain viable. Even with scale, a 1% borrower fee and 1% servicing fee just don't provide enough revenue with the relatively small loan sizes currently being funded.

For example, using Prosper's previous pricing on a typical $7,000 loan, about $130 would be earned in the first year, then another $50 for the remaining two years of the loan (see note 1), for a maximum of $230 in lifetime revenues per loan.

So until loan sizes increase dramatically as secured notes become more common, Prosper has raised its prices for the core portion of its loan demand, the alt-prime and subprime portion. The company left its superprime, class AA price alone because it competes with banks and credit unions for this type of borrower.

As you can see from the table below, most loan-origination fees increased by 1 point, although C and D loans were increased 2 points. Looking at the company's mix of business during the first half of 2007, the new pricing would have doubled its loan-origination revenue from about $500,000 to just over $1 million. The weighted average fee under the prior pricing was 1.2%, compared to 2.4% under the new formula.

Here's the new price plan effective Jan 4, 2008, as announced in the Prosper blog (here):

Type   New Price   Previous Change Avg Loan* Avg Loan Fee*
Prime
AA           1%               1%             none             $9,000            $90
A             2%               1%            +1 point         $10,300         $210
Near Prime
B             2%                1%           +1 point         $9,800          $200
C             3%                1%           +2 points       $8,400           $250
D             3%                1%           +2 points       $6,500           $195
Sub-prime
  E             3%                2%            +1 point        $4,500          $135
HR           3%                2%            +1 point        $3,000           $90

Weighted
Average*** 2.4%          1.2%

*Average loan size during the first half of 2007 per company
**Loan-origination fee deducted from proceeds of loan; there is no fee if the loan does not get funded
***Using the loan mix from the first half of 2007

Note:
1. It depends how the servicing fee is calculated. At Prosper, it's calculated on the outstanding loan balance which for a $7,000 loan averages approximately $6,000 in year 1, $3,750 in year 2 and $1,250 in year 3.

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Mint, Prosper, Zillow, and Kiva are Crunchie Finalists

By Jim Bruene Posted on January 2, 2008
Categories: Mint, Prosper, Zillow

Four online finance companies are finalists in the Crunchies, an awards program sponsored by three major tech blogs: TechCrunch, GigaOM, Read/WriteWeb, and VentureBeat.

Mint is one of five finalists in Most Likely to Succeed (here)
Prosper is one of five in Best (new) Business Model (here)
Zillow is one of five in the Best Consumer Startup (here) and Best Overall (here)
Kiva is one of five in Most Likely to Make the World a Better Place (here)

Winners will be determined by a tally of votes at the site between Dec. 21 and Jan 10.

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New Online Banking Report Published: Person-to-Person Lending 2.0

By Jim Bruene Posted on December 18, 2007
Categories: Lending Club, Loans & Credit, Online Banking Report, P2P Lending, Prosper, Virgin Money, Zopa

For much of the past four or five weeks I've been researching and testing person-to-person lending sites. I've become a lender and have gone through the borrowing process at all three major U.S. P2P lending exchanges: Prosper, Zopa, and Lending Club. Plus I set up friends and family with loans at Virgin Money USA and LoanBack.

It was all part of the research process for the latest Online Banking Report entitled, Person-to-Person Lending 2.0: Disruptive service or market niche? That report is now available at our main website (here).*

I had originally intended on publishing it in early December. But as I was trying to wrap things up, Zopa launched its new U.S unit. So I stopped the presses and added an analysis of its unique model. Then as I was finishing that, Lending Club made a significant change last week, becoming a national lender instead of state-sanctioned one. That too is now in the report.

Here's a summary of the major fourth quarter activity in the person-to-person lending sector:

Oct. 2: Prosper overhauled a number of its lending tools, which were announced at our FINOVATE conference Oct. 2 (video here)
Oct. 6: Virgin Money (formerly CircleLending) launched its revamped friends-and-family service with a splashy debut in Boston with Virgin founder Richard Branson leading the parade (coverage here)
Dec. 3: Zopa launched its U.S. version, an entirely new way of looking at the P2P space (coverage here)
Dec. 13: Lending Club went national in a unique partnership with WebBank

________________________________________________

*Subscribers may download the report free of charge.
Others may purchase it as an individual report.

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"Prosper Days" User Conference Videos Repurposed to Educate Customers

By Jim Bruene Posted on November 27, 2007
Categories: P2P Lending, Prosper, Public Relations

Prosper is one of the few (only???) national retail financial services companies that holds a users conference. The second annual Prosper Days is scheduled for Feb. 25/26 in San Francisco (more info here) and costs $55 in advance or $75 after Jan. 31. This year, they've added a famous keynoter, Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner. I will also be on stage later as part of a panel discussion of bloggers covering the space.

The conference is an excellent idea, creating a buzz around the company and providing a platform for its most loyal customers to share success stories and network. It's a model eBay has used successfully for years. The addition of Dubner should increase press coverage and attendance.

I'm also impressed at how Prosper reuses the content created for the conference. The sessions are recorded and posted to its website to help educate borrowers and lenders. A total of ten videos are available here (see screenshot below).

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Mint, Mortgagebot, and Prosper Win Best of Show at FINOVATE

By Jim Bruene Posted on October 5, 2007
Categories: Finovate, Mint, Prosper

Following is a press release we just sent out over the wires. While these three companies received the highest ratings across the 117 ballots, ratings were relatively high across the board, averaging 5.02 on a 7-point scale. Eight other companies received scores within 10% (e.g., 0.5 points) of the lowest-winning score and thirteen companies were within 20% (1 point).
_______________________________________________________________________________

Oct. 5, 2007
For immediate release:

NEW YORK—(BUSINESS WIRE)—On Tuesday, attendees at the FINOVATE 2007 conference voted on their favorite financial product or service from among the 20 innovations presented. Overall, the DEMOs were extremely well received with an average score of just over 5 points on a 7-point scale. The three winners (in alphabetical order):

Mint: A new online personal finance company launched
two weeks ago (previous coverage here)
Mortgagebot’s Mortgage Marvel: A new mortgage marketplace launched Oct. 2 at FINOVATE 2007 (previous coverage here)
Prosper: The first U.S. person-to-person lender,
launched in Feb. 2006 (previous coverage here)

About the Voting
One “Best of Show” ballot was issued to all 230 registered attendees. Representatives from the presenting companies were not eligible to vote. Each of the 20 DEMOs was rated on a 7-point scale with the three highest receiving “FINOVATE Best of Show” awards. About two-thirds of eligible attendees voted.

About the FINOVATE Conference
The FINOVATE conference is the first demo-based conference for the financial, banking and lending technology industries. Held annually in New York City, the conference offers a chance to explore the future of finance in a fast-paced, intimate and unique way. FINOVATE is organized by Online Financial Innovations. For more information, please visit www.finovate.com.

About Online Financial Innovations
Founded in 1995 by former banker Jim Bruene, Online Financial Innovations is a Seattle-based research company. OFI is best known for publishing the Online Banking Report, a regular newsletter featuring in-depth analysis, relevant data, and informed recommendations to financial services executives in 50 countries. For more information and free sample reports, visit Online Banking Report, email info@netbanker.com or call (206) 517-5021. You may also find OFI’s blog on the latest in online finance & banking at NetBanker.com,

Contacts
Online Financial Innovations
Jim Bruene, 206-517-5021
info@netbanker.com

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FINOVATE 2007 Lineup: The Lending Innovators

By Jim Bruene Posted on August 27, 2007
Categories: Finovate, Lending Club, Loans & Credit, Mortgagebot, P2P Lending, Prosper

As we enter the final week of summer, we will begin showcasing the companies that will be DEMOing new products and services at our inaugural conference FINOVATE 2007. See here for the complete lineup.

Person-to-person lending
P2P lending has grabbed headlines around the world since it launched in the the United Kingdom in March 2005 by Zopa. We are pleased to have on the FINOVATE agenda the two leading U.S. providers: Prosper, the brain-child of E-Loan founder Chris Larsen, and Lending Club, which launched its exchange on the Facebook platform just three months ago.

Both companies received significant cash infusions this summer and we're looking forward to seeing what enhancements the lenders will showcase at FINOVATE 2007.

Lending Club received a significant $10.3 million first round last week (blog entry here). Since the company's launch of Facebook three months ago today, it has closed 134 loans averaging approximately $5,600 for a total of $750,000 in originations.

In June, Prosper, the winner of an OBR Best of the Web award last year (note 1), secured a $20 million third round bringing total funding to $40 million (previous post here). The company now has more than 380,000 members and has funded nearly 14,000 loans totally $80 million. Since inception, Prosper has posted more than 168,000 loan listings from more than 75,000 borrowers.

Mortgage lending
Here's a bit of trivia for Monday afternoon (or Tuesday morning if you read NetBanker via email): What was the first profitable banking website? And no, this is not a trick question with the answer being "none" or "no one knows" (see note 1).

The answer: Bank of America in 1994, or at least that's what an exec told the audience at the first conference on Internet banking held in the summer of 1995. Practically before anyone outside of academia or Silicon Valley had heard of the Web, BofA was using it to produce mortgage leads in the lucrative California market. I can clearly remember the woman who ran BofA's website saying, "mortgage leads are already more than covering the bank's costs (of its website)." Of course, that was in the days when a website cost less than a couple billboards.

We've been writing about online mortgage lending since that first 1995 conference. One of our favorite lending platforms, winner of the second mortgage-related OBR Best of the Web award in 2001, is MortgageBot. The company was also named to last year's INC 500 list of the nation's fastest growing private companies producing a 560% revenue increase during the YE 2002 through YE 2005 period.

At FINOVATE 2007, MortgageBot will take the stage to show a radical new approach to mortgage shopping that its been testing for some time now. We can't release the details yet, but we were luck enough to get a sneak peek on Friday and were very impressed!

Note:

1. Our sister publication, Online Banking Report (OBR), typically names 6 or 7 companies as "Best of the Web" during the course of each year. It is earned by launching a product or service that significantly "raises the bar" in online delivery of retail banking and lending products.

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Venture Funding Flows to Wesabe and Prosper; Wesabe Launches on Facebook

By Jim Bruene Posted on June 20, 2007
Categories: Facebook, Prosper, Wesabe

Two potentially disruptive startups, Prosper, the leader in U.S. P2P lending and Wesabe, the first-mover in social personal finance, both announced new funding rounds today:

Prosper took in $20 million, bringing total funding to $40 million (previous coverage here)
Wesabe added $4 million to its bank account, bringing its funding to $4.7 million (previous coverage here)

These are sizable bets on on niche markets that haven't thrown out a lot of revenues so far. But whether they succeed or not, the money will certainly fund additional innovations that will be educational for those in the banking industry.

Case in point: Wesabe launched an app on the Facebook platform, becoming the first personal finance company to do so (screenshot below). So far it's a simple front door to their group discussions, but with more development resources, it could become a full-fledged "bank" running within the Facebook community.

For more information on Wesabe refer to our latest Online Banking Report, Social Personal Finance (here).

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Prosper Borrower Seeks "iMoney for iPhone"

By Jim Bruene Posted on June 7, 2007
Categories: P2P Lending, Prosper, Search Engine Marketing

When researching my earlier post, 10 Ways for Banks to Leverage Apple iPhone Hysteria, I happened to search for "iphone loans" at Google (see results below). Not really expecting to find anything, I was shocked to see the first result pointing me to a recent loan listing at Prosper (see inset, full listing here).

Unless this is a stealth PR ploy from Apple (doubtful), the enterprising NY waitress who posted this Prosper loan request, is riding the iPhone wave to nail down decent terms on a $1,000 loan, which she says will be used to buy the phone.

Julestar01, who by the way has a great future in marketing ahead of her, used the eye-catching graphic above along with the killer title, iMoney for the iPhone. After being highly recommended by the leader of her Prosper Apple User Group, including his/her first bid for the full grand at 13.20%, the loan is now fully funded at 12.55% with more than seven days remaining. It has already attracting 20 bidders causing the rate to fall 20 basis points even as I wrote this post. I'm sure there will be many copy-cat requests after the success of this one.

It does provide another way for a bank to leverage the iPhone hype: jump in and fund this loan, then you can say you are the first bank to make an iPhone loan.

Another fascinating observation, and the real reason for this post: Prosper, not Apple, or AT&T, or even Citibank, has the number one organic link on Google for "iPhone loans" at absolutely zero cost. That's the first-mover advantage at work.

Page 1 Google search results for "iphone loans"
(10:00 AM PDT, 7 June, 2007, from Seattle IP)

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New Person-to-Person Lender, Lending Club, Hopes Facebook Linkage Allows it to Prosper

By Jim Bruene Posted on May 25, 2007
Categories: Facebook, Lending Club, Loans & Credit, P2P Lending, Prosper

Just as we are putting the finishing touches on our latest Online Banking Report, which looks at the intersection of personal finance and social networks, a new person-to-person lender launches. And how do they plan to gain traction? Through tight integration with Facebook, the second-largest social network. So we are holding the presses, and adding this important new development to our upcoming report.

We'll have much more on it later, but if you are curious now, login to Facebook and check out Lending Club (the easiest way is to login via the link at the top of the Lending Club homepage). Or read Colin Henderson's great analysis here.

Last year, Facebook developers created a proof-of-concept personal finance app, originally called Facebank, then changed to MoochSpot (see previous coverage here). That effort was designed to show how third parties could leverage the Facebook API to create new services. It didn't take long for someone to take the bait. Within a few weeks, BillMonk created an interface to Facebook to support their expensing tracking service, now owned by Obopay. Buxfer also supports login via Facebook's username/password (post here), but does not link into the social network as yet.

But Lending Club is the first to leverage the Facebook interface to support actual financial transactions, in this case lending/borrowing. The company is modeled after Prosper. Lending Club timed its launch to coincide with the Facebook developer's meeting and launch of Facebook Platform.

We'll be testing it during the next few days and will report back on whether its a challenge to mainstream lending, or merely blog fodder. Given the rising power of social networks, my guess is the former.

LendingClub homepage from outside Facebook

LendingClub homepage from inside Facebook

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Update on Prosper.com Traffic Numbers

By Jim Bruene Posted on May 17, 2007
Categories: Metrics & Market Research, Prosper

Last week we reported on the apparent traffic spike at person-to-person lender Prosper. Compete’s Snapshot showed Prosper with 1 million unique visitors in March.

Based on that observation, Compete dove into the Prosper numbers and found that the domain had not yet been added to its more rigorous monitoring system, and in fact, there appeared to be some panel bias in the original March traffic numbers. Under Compete’s revised assumptions, Prosper’s March traffic estimate is a third less, just under 700,000 visitors, instead of 1-million plus.

Also, Compete has now released its April estimates and found that Prosper’s traffic declined 25% to 500,000 visitors. While that no longer puts Prosper at the same level as Suntrust, the lender does have considerably more visitors than the nation’s 23rd largest bank, Comerica (see revised traffic chart below, Prosper is the blue line).

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Virgin Money to Enter U.S. Market Through Acquisition of CircleLending

By Jim Bruene Posted on May 17, 2007
Categories: Mortgage, Refi & Home Equity, P2P Lending, Prosper, Virgin Money, Zopa

This is a very interesting bit of news today. Virgin Group PLC, the high-flying UK-based company run by Richard Branson, says it will be using Waltham, MA-based CircleLending to enter the U.S. financial services market. Virgin's financial services are marketed under the Virgin Money brand in the UK (see screenshot below) and several other markets.

If you take a broad view, CircleLending was the first pure peer-to-peer lender in the U.S., five years before Prosper got its start (see previous coverage here). However, CircleLending has historically limited its involvement to servicing loans made between family members, not brokering the deals or vetting the applicants like Prosper and Zopa.

However, from the sounds of it, that will be changing under the new majority ownership by Virgin USA. According to Asheesh Advani, CEO/Founder of CircleLending:

"(CircleLending will be the) launching pad to brand Virgin in the U.S. in financial services"

According to the American Banker article here, the new venture's first product, sold under the Virgin name, will be a direct mortgage that blends "friends and family" funds with capital from a financial institution and/or the secondary market. They also said they will have a credit card and are looking at student loans.

It will be interesting to see how they use peer-to-peer finance in its efforts. Anthony Marino, Virgin USA's SVP Corporate Development told American Banker:

"(the CircleLending platform) provides a broad opportunity to address consumer needs, and the Virgin brand allows us to bring a unique tone of voice to the market,"

And,

"We are … building a major, Virgin-branded financial services company in the U.S."

Analysis
These are not new concepts, but with the Virgin marketing muscle behind them and the integration of peer-to-peer tools, the newcomer could carve out a significant niche in the massive U.S. mortgage lending business. The new entity could also leverage the CircleLending platform to compete directly with Prosper and Zopa in the U.S. and importing the resulting product into the UK to compete with Zopa there.

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