Showing posts with label FINOVATE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FINOVATE. Show all posts

Monday, July 13, 2009

Looks Like Prosper.com is On Its Way Back!

I recieved an email this morning from Investar of the SEC Prosper and Investing Forums (The "quiet diary") about a possible re-launch of Prosper.com today.

I checked out Prosper, and sure enough, another one of those ominous "down for maintenance" pages like we saw the day before the Finovate Conference.

Paraphrasing Investar's email he says that the US SEC approved Prosper's new securitized note trading platform at 3:30 PM on Friday, and that they pulled the site down over the weekend through Monday.

Looks like we might get (another) launch tomorrow from Prosper.com. Really looking forward to seeing them back into the P2P world.

Thanks Investar for sharing the info, we really do appreciate it.
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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Prosper among best of show at FinovateStartup09

Netbanker just announced the winners of the best of show awards at FinovateStartup09 and they are Prosper, BillShrink (our review), Silver Tail Systems and SimpliFi. The winners were selected by ballots from conference attendees.

After a six-month quiet period to register their platform with the SEC, Prosper re-opened yesterday at Finovate. They are currently serving borrowers in all 50 states and lenders in California.
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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Final presenters announced at Finovate

During FinovateStartup09 today, conference attendees voted on the companies they would like to see during the final session of presentations. The companies selected were - HomeATM, Green Sherpa, Silver Tail Systems, SimpliFi, SmartHippo, DebtGoal.com, Rudder, Prosper and Credit Karma. We have previously reviewed several of these companies in prepartion for Finovate.
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Just in Time for FINOVATE: Many Companies Launching New Features

Just in time for FINOVATE many new features are being launched by participant companies, some of which we've profiled here before.

I'm following the conference online today via webcast, though wishing I could be in beautiful San Fransisco, which is lovely this time of year.

I'm starting this list with items I've already made notes of, but may update later during the day as I follow along the FINOVATE presentations today.

  • Mint (see previous my review) has added CD and Brokerage shopping options. I wish they had this when I choose my brokerage two months ago, but I'm glad they have it now, and I'm glad to see I chose well. They've also added the ability to change dates on transactions which is great for those checks that clear late and things like that, so you can keep your budget on track.
  • Lending Club is offering new lender features which Tom posted about earlier today.
  • Wesabe has a tagging system now, which will be a great asset to users.
  • UPDATE: It's 3:00 and I just got an email from GreenSherpa that their beta system is now available.
  • UPDATE: it's 4:30 and Rudder just launched an iPhone app. You can get it in the app store. Now word about what's out there for blackberry users.
  • SmartyPig continues to respond to customers in real-time, and has added a "lower this" to reduce your monthly savings if friends and family members' contributions to your savings goal has enabled you to choose between meeting your goal sooner, or reducing your monthly contribution. It suggests the difference for you too, so you don't have to do the math.

Jessica Ward is a professional writer and blogger based in Seattle, WA. She also blogs at www.pennywisefamily.blogspot.com, to learn more about her visit www.jessicaward.me
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Lending Club previews new lender feature at FinovateStartup09

Today at FinovateStartup 2009, Lending Club previewed a new feature which shows lenders how their returns stack up against other lenders. Currently, the average lender makes 9.05% after fees and defaults according to Lending Club. This feature will show you, via a nice graphical interface, how you compare against others. See the screen shot below:


Lending Club also emphasized the success of their secondary loan platform which launched six months ago. Since then over $2,000,000 in loans have been traded and the time to liquidity is two days. In addition to providing liquidity to new lenders, this platform provides new investment opportunities. There are 1800 loans on secondary loan platform right now.
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FinovateStartup09 kicks off today

FinovateStartup09 kicks off in a few minutes in San Francisco. We will be blogging and reviewing the financial technology startups here throughout the day.

FINOVATE Startup is billed as the "largest group of financial technology startups ever assembled in one place" with 57 companies in the lineup. All the major p2p lending players will be there including Lending Club, Pertuity Direct, and Prosper. Prosper has already announced the re-launch of their platform timed with the conference.

This year, for the first time, FINOVATE offers a real-time webcast. There is still time to purchase access to the webcast for $495.


Here is a complete list of companies featured today as well as links to our previous reviews:
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Friday, April 24, 2009

FinovateStartup: Stock Market Resources





FINOVATESTARTUP 2009 opens next week in California and we’re still researching all of the amazing participant companies.

Here are quick profiles of several applications that might be of interest to prospective stock market investors.

First up is WeSeed.com:
WeSeed’s basic principle is that everyone should be able to use the stock market. It uses a gaming-type platform to match your interests with stocks you might like to follow, and then gives you a virtual investment to create a virtual portfolio. While the money and the trades are imagined, the data is all real, allowing users to get their feet in the sandbox without the risk of loosing their hard-earned-savings. It also opens stock trading fun up to those of us who don’t have spare change to sink into the market.

Next is KaChing, previously the Facebook app FSX) KaChing allows you to follow 1500 users who generated positive returns in 2008 (perhaps the only investors who generated positive returns in 08?). It proves free open-source access to previously unavailable financial data for those who are serious about breaking down the stock market. KaChing allows users to track real or virtual portfolio and build, test and populate investing algorithms. This isn’t the sandbox folks, this is the nitty-gritty.



Kapitall.com is next. They’ve recently registered with the SEC as an investment advisor. They allow for real or virtual portfolios. The novelty here is that all trades are completely transparent and public to all users. Pretty interesting stuff!

Finally, PortfolioMonkey.com is an application which shows potential diversification options for your portfolio. It’s free to use and again can be used with your real or your virtual portfolio.

Within this list there’s something for everyone at every level of stock-market-knowledge. Good luck and happy trading!


Jessica Ward is a personal finance blogger and freelance writer based in Seattle. She also blogs at www.pennywisefamily.blogspot.com
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Monday, April 20, 2009

Finovate Profile: CalendarBudget

CalendarBudget is going to be a participant at the 2009 Finovate conference later this month.

The company, which was founded by husband and wife team Eric and Robin Poulin in Toronto is planning to exit beta mode just in time for the start of FinovateStartup on April 28th. (Hint: if you want to take advantage of their lower fees for beta users--sign up now!)

CalendarBudget is a unique method for planning your family's budget and expenses, showing it in a visual format. No more spreadsheets. The CalendarBudget system plots your transactions on a calendar. You tag your in-and-out transactions with a category (cable, debt, auto, mortgage for example) and you can see when your monthly ups and downs in income are. It also plots your daily bank balance across the top of the calendar (see example).

For right now, CalendarBudget is free, but upon exiting the beta testing period, there will be a monthly charge of about $5 for beta-testers and $8 for new users. There are also six-month and annual plans. A 30-day free trial period is also available.

Another interesting feature is that CalendarBudget is available for banks and corporate users in an unbranded system, where the client can add their own branded "skin." This could be an excellent value-added-service for banks, credit unions and other financial service providers to offer their customers with their accounts.

CalendarBudget does not aggregate your information, but allows you to import it from several accounts. They are considering offering a free version that would allow users to try the system with one account for free with reduced functionality.

CalendarBudget has been in testing for 18 months with 1200 users worldwide. The platform is intuitive (similar to Outlook) and support is available through their forums.

Jessica Ward is a Freelance Writer in the Seattle area. She also blogs at www.pennywisefamily.blogspot.com. She covers personal finance and family.

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Friday, April 17, 2009

See 57 financial technology startups in one day

At Prosper Lending Review we are not only interested in p2p lending - all financial technology startups capture our attention. For this reason, we are quite excited about FINVOATE Startup 2009 which will be held in San Francisco on April 28, 2009.

The regular ticket prices for FinovateStartup09 will expire today (April 17th) at midnight. Register before the end of today and save $100 off the last-minute ticket prices. Use offer code fan109 to save an additional $100 on the ticket price.

FINOVATE Startup is billed as the "largest group of financial technology startups ever assembled in one place" with 57 companies in the lineup. All the major p2p lending players will be there including Lending Club, Pertuity Direct, and Prosper.


Here is a complete list of companies:
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Thursday, April 16, 2009

Makeover at DebtGoal.com

I posted earlier this month about DebtGoal.com, one of the many up-and-coming financial services companies that will be participating in FINOVATE later this month.

I wanted to let Prosper Lending Review readers that the site has gotten a dramatic face-lift today and is far easier to use and navigate. Data-entry is simpler and the results more useful.

The interface has a much better "Web 2.0 feel" and the charts and tables are relevant and well-placed. Overall, it is intuitive and comfortable.

They are not yet aggregating but that is in the works. I've also suggested a couple of ideas that would be helpful--for instance, flagging recurring transactions. I'm really encouraged by how quickly this company is jumping to implementing user recommendations.

If you haven't checked out DebtGoal.com yet, or if you have and didn't like what you saw, I encourage you to give it another try.
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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

At Finovate 2009 Budget Solutions Abound


Holy budgets Batman! Finovate 2009 is showcasing no less than ten (count them 10!) budget solutions for personal finances. I explored some of these on my blog this past week as I wrote all about budgeting for a week, but there’s a lot out there and I couldn't do them justice there.

For the sake of the reader, I’m going to make some categories here to differentiate what might be right for your style as a prospective user or curious reader. Some of these will overlap due to the nature of the features. All are free to use unless otherwise noted. The denotation ($) means fee-based and (*$) means free during Beta trials, or some features are subscriber-based.

I included a “social media” category here—because two of these are very similar to common social applications. Wesabe is a lot like Facebook in that people can recommend or comment and share information. Geezeo has a lot of Twitter-like features and their “confession booth” even integrates with Twitter (not to mention, it's outrageously addictive).

Rudder is in a bit of a class of its own. It appears to include bill-pay features (note to self to play with this one a bit more).

There are essentially two "classes" of personal finance application in my view. Those that require data-entry of transactions, and those that don't. Otherwise, the items below appear in no particular order and none of these are paid placements.

Data-Entry

Social Media Features
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Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Finovate 2009: DebtGoal.com Review

In case you’ve forgotten, Finovate 2009 begins on April 28th. In advance of the conference, we’re profiling a lot of the presenting companies. One of these companies is GoalSpring’s DebtGoal.com product.

DebtGoal.com is a free tool intended to help users get out of debt. I’ve had a few conversations with the DebtGoal team (I’m an alpha-tester) and they really are passionate about helping people get out of debt, and stay out. While DebtGoal is currently a little rough around the edges, I’m excited to see what’s coming up next—as I know they’re working on some new projects.

Right now with DebtGoal you enter your debts, payments and interest rates (no account numbers or other scary things), aggregation is “in the hopper” in the next phase rollout, but at this point everything is manual data-entry. I’m hoping that they’ll allow an “enter manually” option for technophobes who are nervous about the aggregating systems. I personally love them, but I can understand those who don’t.

Using your outstanding debts and interest rates, DebtGoal produces a payoff plan for you and suggests paying off in the order of highest interest to lowest interest, and based on the minimum payment requirements, it sets payment schedule for you, based on your budget and priorities for these debts. I personally adhere to the “snowball method” of paying the smallest balance first, closing the account and then moving on to the others. I’ve requested that DebtGoal provide both options. Not sure if they’ll be able to incorporate that feature, but it seems like both methods are sound.




Why use a system like DebtGoal? I think it can help if you’re juggling multiple credit accounts and overwhelmed by deciding what to pay on what account. Perhaps you find yourself paying minimums only because you can’t decide or don’t know what to do about the next one. Then you’ll just make a big payment with the “extra” at the end of the month, right? DebtGoal encourages you to make a goal and stick with it. It can also help you plan your monthly budget so you know how much to set aside for each bill.


Another nice feature is that it shows you how long it will take you to get out of debt if you pay only minimum balances. I set a goal to be debt free by the end of this year, and adjusted my Mint.com budget accordingly. You can chose either a desired debt-free date, or tell DebtGoal your desired combined monthly debt-payment budget, and they will show you the smartest way to allocate, and provide you with a debt-free date based on that plan.


One feature that I really like, and haven’t seen other places, is that it shows new spending separately, by basically showing you that you have to pay A: your regular debt-busting budget amount and B: your new spending to keep up on your goal.

I’ll attach a screenshot here, but for my pride’s sake, I’ve removed my account balances. Rest assured, this will be paid off by year’s end. I’m on track!

If you have debt and you’d like a nice graphical way to tackle that, I’d encourage you to give DebtGoal.com a try!
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Monday, April 6, 2009

CreditKarma: Never Pay for Your Credit Score Again!

I feel like a moron. Just two weeks ago I paid $14.95 for three-month access to my credit score. Let me tell you a little story about how this began:

My neighbor, four doors down, has the same name as me, with the minor difference of a different middle initial. Her middle initial, happens to be that of my maiden name. Because I hyphenated my last names for the first few years after I was married, I have a registered “credit alias” that is exactly the same as her name, and a mailing address just a few digits off.

That really isn’t too much of a problem, except that because our addresses our so similar, and she doesn’t pay her bills, her collections accounts arrive on my credit score routinely.

Four more of these recently appeared on my credit report and were discovered by my mortgage bank during my refinance. I shot off another letter to TransUnion last week hoping to intervene before my rate-lock was threatened.

I’ve got to say, I’m pretty tired of paying for my own credit score. Yes, you can get a credit report free annually, (just one) but it’s far more helpful in a situation like mine to check it more frequently than that.

Finovate 2009 presenter, CreditKarma may be the solution people like me are looking for. It provides constant, free access to your credit score as well as some other features.

You can see how your credit score stacks up to those in your age range, state, or even email domain. You can also use their calculator system to see how adjustments in your financial situation would affect your score in theory. Would it help or hurt you to close a high-interest account, extend your credit limit, or even file for bankruptcy? I was surprised to know that paying off my credit card balance entirely will actually hurt my score, and that optimally I should be carrying some credit card debt. (Thanks anyway, but I’ll still be going debt-free). There’s a screen to view your long-term credit score over time, which will be very helpful for tracking identity fraud or excessive credit inquiries (which cost you points).

The site is free because of sponsorship (think Mint), but I found the sponsorship to be rather oppressive and cluttering. However, not so much that I won’t be using CreditKarma. Also, be reassured, that they fund the site through ad partnership only, not through selling your personal info.

There are some features that I especially like including a credit card debt calculator which allows you to either enter your projected monthly payment and calculate a payoff date, or enter a date and it will show you your estimated monthly payments. Adding a little extra value to this calculation is their friendly nudge that shows you how much you can cut your payoff time by paying just a little bit more.

At this time, CreditKarma is only showing credit scores from TransUnion, and not Experian and Equifax, but in my experience, TransUnion’s scores have always been the lowest (They’ve also been the only ones routinely confusing my neighbor’s accounts with mine).

Because CreditKarma is requesting your score on your behalf rather than for a lender, your credit score won’t be affected by the inquiry.

Jessica Ward is a freelance writer and blogger located in Seattle, WA. She blogs on finance, credit, family and food at http://www.pennywisefamily.blogspot.com/.
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Friday, March 20, 2009

Green Sherpa Review: Personal Cash Flow Management

Ok, I admit it, I choose financial companies to profile based on my level of curiosity from the company’s name. Yes, a classic case of judging a book by its cover.

Unfortunately, with the Green Sherpa book, I’ve not had an opportunity to get past the cover, so will have to write this review solely based on the company’s press kit. A less-than-desirable level of transparency for this blogger, but you might want to know what this funny-named company does too, so I'll share what I've learned so far and fill you in later as I learn more.

I reviewed Green Sherpa’s materials and then tried to log in for the 30-day free trial. I was greeted by the following message:

Thank you for your interest in Green Sherpa and for signing up for our private beta!
We have been overwhelmed by the positive response and are slowly letting users in during our beta phase. Watch out for an e-mail with an activation link over the next few weeks as we activate your account.
The Green Sherpa Team

Well, I’m glad they’re overwhelmed, I guess, but considering how overwhelmed they are, you’d think there would be a little more buzz about them. Here’s what I know (again, almost exclusively from their PR efforts).

Green Sherpa is a fee-based personal cash-flow software. Their target is the serious DIY money-manager age 30 to 55 who currently uses software from a box on a shelf. They believe their continuous improvement cloud-computing model will show the consumer how easy it is to work online vs. downloading and installing software you’ve got to update and upgrade all of the time. Their theory is that this pitch will also help users to shell out their $7.95 monthly subscription fee.

Not updating and buying new software all of the time would sell me if I were in the market for such software. When will Microsoft get the hint and start doing this with Office? I digress….

Green Sherpa offers a few novel approaches that you don’t find in the free web apps like Wasabe and Mint. You can develop goals, and Green Sherpa shows you progress toward your goals. It also shows you cash-flow projections—the month’s “where you’re going” versus the “where you’ve been” information that most of us get from our personal finance reports.

The dashboard is spreadsheet based so should keep happy all of the spreadsheet devotees. Another distinct advantage is that you can share your information “real time” with your financial team (CPA, broker or attorney) without burning reports to disk, or emailing/printing cumbersome PDF reports. It seems like it would also be nice for baby-boomers who're managing their elderly parents' finances, especially if from a long distance.

Green Sherpa debuted September of 2008. It is currently in beta-release. As mentioned before, it is based on monthly subscriber fees of less than $10 per month. A 30 day free trial is offered, but they’re not accepting new subscribers at this time. I’m not sure if this is a capacity issue or an indicator of institutional health. Overall, it’s a great idea, and if it’s as good as advertised, I could see the potential that it may pay for itself in terms of subscriber fees to the user. I’d love to give this a test-drive and hope that we’ll hear more from these guys before the Finovate conference next month.

Jessica Ward is a freelance writer and blogger. She blogs on personal finance, real estate and families living frugally.
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Friday, March 13, 2009

Mortgage and Refi Solution: SmartHippo.com

Another participant at the Finovate 2009 conference in April is the Montreal-based SmartHippo.

Smart Hippo is a smart idea indeed. It is an innovative combination of social network and search engine, specific to mortgage lending. SmartHippo does for mortgage shopping, what Travelocity does for vacation planning.

A SmartHippo user can search mortgage rates that came from banks, from web bots that crawl for additional rates, and even from customers who post the rates that they’ve received. Users (called “hippos”) can also post comments about the service they’ve received from lenders or how their closing process went.

One of the greatest benefits that I’ve observed is that you can “window shop” for rates before supplying identifying information about yourself. If you went “shopping” for a loan with a mortgage broker, your FICO score would show an inquiry made, and it would cost you points on your score.

SmartHippo allows you to “look before you leap” so to speak. Also, the SmartHippo search engine shows you the available ranges for closing costs as well as interest rates, so you have a clearer idea of what you’re getting into. You won’t be lured by low rates only to be surprised with astronomical closing costs.





SmartHippo began operations in September of 2007, but only really began marketing in October of 2008. Marketing consists of viral and Internet efforts. Blogging, contests and Twitter (you can follow @SmartHippo along with me). Right now the South By South West conference is running, and they’re holding a “Hide the Hippo” contest via Twitter, encouraging participants to locate the hippo around Austin, TX.

Jessica Ward is a freelance writer and resident of not-so-sunny Seattle. She also blogs about frugality and family at The Pennywise Family. You can follow her on Twitter at @Jessc098.
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Friday, February 20, 2009

SmartyPig - Real savings for the rest of us!

A presenter at the FINOVATE conference in April will be SmartyPig.com. We at PLR thought you might like to know about this Iowa-based firm before that, so here’s a little primer on the company.

First, SmartyPig is not a bank. It’s an “independent online transaction solution.” A fancy name for an automatic withdrawal system that works with your bank and an FDIC-insured Savings Bank. Their banking partner is the 115-year-old publicly traded West Bank (NASDAQ: WTBA).

Put simply, it’s an automatic savings solution. You can really “pay yourself first” and mean it. When you set up an account, it is for a specific savings goal, and a dollar value $2,000 for a flat screen TV or $8,000 for a honeymoon cruise for example. You’ll also have to say when you want to accomplish your savings goal. TV for Superbowl next year? SmartyPig will calculate how much to automatically withdraw from the account specified to make achieving your goal as painless as possible.

Additionally, SmartyPig has a major social media component. Once you log in you can share your savings goal with friends and family. This would be great for families saving for their new baby, or newlyweds saving for a house, or even your little one’s college savings accounts.

Grandma and Grandpa can easily make deposits to the Smarty Pig account via your Facebook page or blog.

SmartyPig offers high interest rates (right now at 3.25%) but with minimum balances of just $25. How so high? They say the overhead is low, and they so far they don’t need to run an advertising campaign, further suppressing costs.

Oh, and did I mention there’s more? Once you’ve met your savings goal, you cash out with a gift card, AHC deposit or check. But if you were saving up for a specific purchase, request your payment in the form gift card, and get a boost of up to 6% with one of their Best in Class Retailers. They have partnerships with Zales, Best Buy, Sandals Resort, Amazon.com and many other leading retailers. Talk about value!

Each SmartyPig customer can have as many savings goals as they want, and the SmartyPig service is free.

They don’t disclose how many accounts there are, but they do say that the average account goal is $8,500, four years in duration and that the most frequent goal is vacation savings.

SmartyPig launched in March of 2008 and is a privately held company. Just before Christmas of ‘08 they also launched in Australia and New Zeland with their partner Australia New Zealand Bank (ANZ).

In an email interview with Jon Gaskell, co-founder of SmartyPig, he told me that because of SmartyPig’s structure as a “transaction engine,” SmartyPig can be up and running in any country, any language and any currency in 60-90 days. Watch for growth from SmartyPig for sure. When I questioned about expanding to other savings accounts Gaskell responded “We want to continue trying to perfect the social side of saving all over the world.” Lookout world—SmartyPig is on the move! I can’t help but wonder if in pursuit of global savings domination if they’ll have to adjust their corporate image to enter some markets? I don’t see the SmartyPig brand being universally accepted in all cultures, but I’ll be watching their growth for sure. It should be very interesting.

I also pushed Gaskell on the issue of savings. How can you really “sell” savings in a country that culturally just isn’t used to it? Americans are charging literally Trillions of dollars every year on plastic. I questioned as to if this is Field of Dreams scenario where if they build it we will come, or if he foresees a savings trend. He notes that while American Savings rates have been in the negative for years, they are starting to swing into positive numbers. He notes that SmartyPig isn’t innovative other than bells and whistles. It’s simply implementing the age-old tradition of save first, buy later. Timeless and wise financial advice that transcends all cultures.

If you would like to know more about how my experience was in setting up my SmartyPig Account visit my blog at for my review from a customer's perspective.

Jessica Ward is a freelance writer based in Seattle and enjoys writing personal finance, corporate profiles and non-profit profiles. Disclosure: she also happens to be a very happy SmartyPig customer.
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Saturday, February 7, 2009

Personal finance in a "refreshing" new light

Like mission control for your money, Mint finally puts all of your financial information in one place. And did I mention it’s free?

In less than an hour I was able to link with my sixteen cash, investment and loan accounts to Mint. In just a couple of hours I had classified my previous 90 days of transactions into spending and budget categories.

After that initial investment of time, Mint.com has proved again and again to be well worth the effort. I spend about ten minutes a week classifying the receipts when I put them in the checkbook ledger, and I’ve been able to stick with it.

Once all of my spending was coded into categories, I was able to set up a budget. I could even compare to similar mint.com users (anonymously) with others in my geographic area. Now when I approach my budget cap I receive a (optional) text message to my mobile phone and an email warning.


Three months later, I’ve twice slashed my food budget in half without making a conscious effort to do so. Just knowing what we’re spending helps control costs. Thinking of ordering desert? If you’re an iPhone user, you can take a look at your ‘dining out’ budget on the spot and see if you’re in a place for that splurge.

Mint also continues to get better all the time. Thanks Mint, for adding asset trackers this past week. For those of us whose assets are tied up in real estate equity, cars or concert posters, it’s nice to open Mint.com and see a positive number at the bottom of the sidebar under “net worth.”

Mint.com also offers a feature for those of us that may need to reevaluate our financial choices. The free software is free for a reason. There’s some sponsorship to Mint.com. It’s nicely confined to an extra tab and not forced on you via popups or offensive emails. It looks at your spending and savings habits and suggests products that may be a better fit. Some of these I’m even considering switching to.

Mint's interface is so easy to understand and easy to read that yesterday, when my fourth grader came home and said she'd learned about "good and bad kinds of interest" in math class we opened up Mint for clearer examples of interest at work for and against our family's budget.

If Mint.com is reading, I do have a few suggestions for improvement. However they are so minor that I hesitate to mention here for fear anyone may be discouraged from trying Mint.com for themselves.

In the “spend space” I would like to see an “all spending” category added. I want to see historically how I’ve reduced my spending month-to-month since joining Mint. I know I have, but the charts are psychologically rewarding.

I’d love to see an application that downloaded the value of the stack of savings bonds I have stashed in a safe deposit box. I know that the treasury offers an app online to valuate class EE bonds with the serial numbers. It would be great to be able to store my bond info there too. But don’t bother if I’m the only person who still has bonds.

Who wouldn't love to see an online bill paying option come to Mint one day? I go to mint to see when my credit card bill is due and how much I should pay towards it. It would be really nice to pay it from there.

I recommend Mint.com without reservation, especially for those like me who’ve struggled with maintaining their household budget or tracking their spending. We all know we should—-but it’s easier said than done. Give it a shot—you have nothing to loose. I’m feeling Minty. Are you?

Note: Mint isn't the only player in this business. Wesabe is similar. My review of Wesabe will be on its way to Prosper Lending Review shortly.

Jessica Ward is a freelance writer based in the Seattle area.
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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Lending Club and Loanio present at FINVOATE 2008

Two dozen companies including Lending Club and Loanio presented at FINOVATE 2008 in New York City today. Netbanker reported on the various presentations throughout the day.

Of course, the big news is Lending Club re-opened to lenders today. They also opened the first secondary market for p2p loans. According to Netbanker's report of the presentation, Lending Club has "been experiencing a 2% default rate and have been approving 14% of applications received."

As for Loanio, Netbanker's Jim Bruene reported, "Solomon walked the audience through the Loanio loan application process emphasizing the option to have a co-borrower, a first for a U.S. P2P lender, and the optional Platinum loan listing, which includes a host of verifications to give lenders more assurance the borrower is being truthful with their application."

Our review of Loanio is here. Loanio was a last-minute addition to FINOVATE after Pertuity Direct delayed their launch to ensure they meet regulatory requirements.
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Thursday, March 20, 2008

Prosper, Lending Club and Loanio to present at FinovateStartup 2008

FinovateStartup will showcase about 40 financial startups to hundreds of press, bloggers, analysts, venture capitalists, industry leaders and banking executives in San Fransisco on April 29th. Prosper, Lending Club and Loanio will each demo their platforms.

Last year at Finovate 2007, Prosper announced several new features and Lending Club highlighted Facebook social connections and their Lending Match technology.

Loanio has not yet launched but is expected to prior to the conference.

Here are Prosper's and Lending Club's presentations from last year:





Patrick Gannon from Lending Club was also interviewed by Visible Banking during last year's conference.

Here is the list of companies that will present at FinovateStartup 2008: Andera, Aradiom, Authentium, Boulevard R., Buxfer, Cake Financial, CAPS, ClairMail, Credit Karma, Diversinet, Expensr, First ROI, FindABetterBank, Guard ID, Guardian Analytics, IP Commerce, Jwaala, Lending Club, Loanio, Mint, Prosper, SmartyPig, SmartHippo, Simple Tuition, SocialPicks, TradeKing, TrustedID, Tyfone, Unified Money, VaultStreet, Vestopia, Vidoop, Wesabe, Wonga, WorkLight, Zecco and 3 others still in stealth.

Update (9/10/2008): Loanio screenshots
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Friday, October 5, 2007

Prosper Announces New Upcoming Lender Features at Finovate Conference

Prosper announced some new upcoming features at the FINOVATE conference this week. Included in the changes are a more transparent risk estimator when placing a bid. Currently Prosper shows Experian default rates to estimate the risk. Now they have enough data from Prosper loans to start displaying the risk based on Prosper's historical default rates which should give a more accurate picture of the expected returns.





Prosper also announced plans for building auto-portfolios much like the ones that are available at Lending Club. You will be able to select a portfolio based on your risk tolerance and your desired return. This is similar to the standing order options they currently have, but with the new interface Prosper will set the standing order criteria that best matches the selected portfolio.





Along with these changes Prosper has announced that they will be increasing the servicing fees for A loans to 1% and decreasing the servicing fee for AA loans to 0% (not a misprint).
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