P2P Lending Company Prosper Marketplace (Prosper.com) has hired Nick Talwar, former head of Citibank Sweden. Talwar’s task as Chief Revenue Officer will be to bring Prosper back on a growth track.
As reported earlier Prosper is currently experiencing high losses and struggling to reconnect with earlier growth rates.
Kiva has announced a crowdsourcing contest to produce a 30 sec. to 2 min. video that is not only inspiring and explains how the Kiva process works but also raises awareness and attracts new lenders to Kiva.
The contest is sponsored by Tongal, a startup that crowdsources the creation of content. The best videos win a total of 10,000 US$.
In October Smava Poland (Smava.pl) entered a cooperation with Euro Finanse, an independent vendor of financial products and services. Smava says the cooperation already yields very positive results. The first three weeks of cooperation brought a 50% growth in loan volume.
Euro Finanse was selected as partner due to it’s sales strength and presence not only in the large cities but with 450 financial consultants throughout the country, says CEO PrzemysÅ‚aw Moscicki.
Apart from sales activities the consultants can handle additional tasks like verifying identities of borrowers in person and validating income statements.
To my knowledge Smava.pl is the first p2p lending company to use an offline sales channel to sell the service.
Prosper Marketplace, Inc. the company running the p2p lending site Prosper.com had a net loss of 2,238,138 US$ in the third quarter of 2009. Furthermore Prosper’s cash reserve is low. As of September 30th, 2009 Prosper had 2,079,624 US$ cash and cash equivalents left from an initial VC funding of 40 million US$. Even accounting for the recent 1 million US$ investment of a banker, at the current burn rate Prosper will need new funding soon.
However the timing and circumstances make chances for a new VC round look less than ideal.
Prosper reopened the site for new loans after completing the SEC registration process in July 2009, but still struggles to reach growth rates the marketplace had in 2007 and 2008.
Virgin Money has been a facilitator of friends and family p2p loans in the US. The last official number on loan volume generated was 390 million US$. Virgin Money had aquired predecessor Circlelending in 2007. In the article Virgin Money Letting US Business Fade Away, P2PLending News.com now lists several signs that Virgin Money might exit the p2p lending market.
Nigel Morris, co-founder of Capital One, has invested 1 million US$ into Prosper.com via his venture capital company QED Investors.
The investment comes in form of a convertible promissory note for the amount of 1 million US$, which is due in one year and carries an interest rate of 15%. QED Investors may elect to convert the note into shares of Prosper’s preferred stock.
VC funding for Prosper now totals 41 million US$. Nigel Morris joins Prosper’s board of directors.
(via TechCrunch.com, sources press release & other)