portfolio plans

New features at Prosper

wiseclerk 2 Comments

Immediately following up on the previous post on Prosper.com, the list of new features at Prosper is now known. Most notable are:

  • Lenders can turn standing orders into portfolio plans. The interesting part is that lenders can share (publish) their portfolio plans on their member page and other lenders can use it for themselves.
  • Bidding via API. This allows bidding to be delegated to third party applications. Much like the bid snipers and bidding agents it now becomes possible to entrust third party applications to invest money at Prosper. It remains to be seen how lenders will make use of this
  • Referral award for new borrowers raised from 35 US$ to 50 US$. Example button below. If you use that and your loan is funded, I am paid 50 US$.

Business & Personal Loans. Great Rates. Prosper. 

Changes at Prosper

wiseclerk

Prosper.com applied several changes as described in this announcement. Some of the changes were expected as plans had been known, some were surprises.

Portfolio plans

Portfolio plans allow the lender to automatically build a conservative, balanced, moderate or agressive portfolio. That means the lender no longer picks individual loans to bid on but chooses to invest in a plan. The feature is implemented based on Prosper's standing orders. The difference is that it uses standing orders predefined by Prosper, not by the lender. Prosper shows "estimated returns" for each portfolio – currently ranging from 8.37 to 11.06 percent.
Comment: Lendingclub introduced this concept earlier on. Lenders are currently examining and debating on which rationale Prosper did build the standing orders behind the portfolios.

Estimated ROI is shown in listings

Prosper now shows the estimated return on each listing, including predictions for defaults and costs for the servicing fee. The default estimate is now based on Prosper's own data (past performance) rather then Experian data.

Comment: This display does improve lender information especially for unexperienced lenders.

Ended listings hidden (surprise!)

Prosper now hides all data of expired listings. Continue reading →