Prosper Days 2008 Videos

Hundreds of borrowers, lenders and Prosper employees converged on San Fransisco in February for Prosper Days 2008. Prosper has now released video from the conference. Thanks to Prosperous Land for the tip.

Prosper Days 2008: Prosper 101 - Session for those who are new to Prosper or need a refresher course. Bryan and Tim give a Prosper history lesson, site tour and how-to demonstration.




Prosper Days 2008: Chris Larson's Keynote - Chris Larsen, CEO and Co-Founder, Prosper Marketplace Inc. Introduction by Marilyn Paguirigan.




Prosper Days 2008: Borrower Experiences - This session presents an opportunity for all members to gain a better understanding of the overall experience and process from a Borrower.




Prosper Days 2008: Leveraging Social Capital - In this session, panelists share their thoughts on social capital and what role it can play in improving borrower credit performance and lender returns.




Prosper Days 2008: Managing Large Portfolios - In this session, one of Prosper's larger lenders will discuss some best practices for creating a large portfolio with attractive returns. In addition, the session highlights a third party technology solution for building and managing a large portfolio.




Prosper Days 2008: Earning A Risk Adjusted Return - This session covers how to earn a risk adjusted return by understanding the relationship between risk and pricing.





Prosper Days 2008: Collection Practices - This session reviews the current status of Prosper’s collection process, including the results of several recent initiatives, and discuss the road map for future enhancements.




Prosper Days 2008: Prosper API Workshop - The API session provides a discussion with a number of users of the Prosper API including demos and commentary on how to put the API to work for better bidding, building applications, and even creating a new business built on Prosper data. The session is for advanced users, both programmers and non-programmers alike.




Prosper Days 2008: Advanced API Applications - Advanced applications information that goes beyond the API Workshop topics.




Blogger Panel: P2P Lending 2.0 Trends - A diverse group of banking, microfinance, P2P lending and social networking experts shed light on trends impacting Prosper, financial services and personal finance.




Prosper Days 2008: Town Hall Lunch - Town Hall Lunch with Chris Larsen, John Witchel and Bob Kagle.

ABC 7 covers Prosper Days

ABC 7 has produced a short clip with highlights from Prosper Days. It includes an interview with "Freakoconomics" author Stephen Dubner and lender Marilyn Paguirigan. See our previous post for the rest of Prosper Days coverage by the mainstream media and blogs.

ABC 7: New lending site helps people "prosper"

Prosper Days 2008 wrap up and a look back to 2007

The long anticipated Prosper Days 2008 is now over. We have published notes on Chris Larsen's keynote address. Here is some other coverage around the net:

• SF Business Times - Prosper CEO sees company benefiting from credit crunch
• NetBanker - Prosper Helps Borrowers Tap the Value of Their "Social Capital"
• Lazy Man and Money - Prosper Days (Day 1 Overview)
• j9359 - Prosper Days 2008 is over now
• Prosper Marketplace Monitor - Prosper didn't catch fraudster using its services, but CEO takes credit for conviction
• Muychingon - Getting ready for Prosper Days
• Elaine Vigneault - Initial Thoughts - Prosper Days
• zcommodore - Things that make you go hmm
• bamalucky - Are you at Prosper Days? and The last Prosper Days?
• Prosper Forums - Live reporting from PD08 in IRC (login required)
• Rateladder - Bidding With the Prosper API Code Example QuickSnipe.java
• Prosperous Land - Vicarious Live-Blogging: Prosper Days

We expect Prosper to post videos and photos from Prosper Days 2008 in the near future. In the meantime, here's a look back to 2007:

Prosper Days 2007 Keynote Address by CEO Chris Larsen

Prosper Days 2007 - Lender Panel
RGlad, JaneyBooboo, Pensioner, L5



Prosper Days 2007: Town Hall Meeting



Prosper Days 2007: Group Leader Panel

Prosper Days 2008: Keynote from CEO Chris Larsen

Here are a few notes from Chris Larsen's Prosper Days keynote address.

• Prosper provides strong loyalty and strong diversification
• Shared several success stories of prosper loans (Soldier loan consolidation, loan for a toy business, super prime home improvement loan, charity loan for needy family, and a loan from a friend)
• Prosper can improve borrower's credit
• Prosper is growing - $120,000,000 in loans and 600,000 registered members
• As he has mentioned before, lenders are avoiding subprime loans; in January 2007 subprime loans represented 24% of loans and in January 2008 they made up 5% of loans
• "Attractive" ROI loans up nearly 200%
• Prosper started giving rate guidance to borrowers and added rate tools for lenders
• Prosper now warns bidders when they are likely to get a low estimated return
• Portfolio plans were introduced this year
• Rate guidance to borrowers has significantly reduced the number of borrowers requesting "low ROI" loans and increase the "attractive ROI" listings by 250%
• Borrower requested features: schedule a date for a future payment, save listing draft to finish later, preview listing, re-use listing as template, pay loan with lending balance, have two active loans
• Lender requested features: watch list, instant transfers, better guidance on manual bidding, addition of loan categories, show community payments on group, add "4+ months late" loan status, show history of second borrowers, instant transfers, 1099's on a single statement, increase max rate to 35%
• Prosper opened a new forum and now has an official blog
• Social capital - impact of groups on default rates; small groups do better than large groups
• Endorsements from friends improved performance and rates
• Collections improved - $34,665 collected in August 2007 and $69,807 in January 2008
• Fraud prevention - first conviction for fraud
• New feature - portfolio plans can be created and shared
• Looking ahead - More lender control (tools, transparency, secondary market), growing attractive listings, credit crunch is an opportunity

Update: There was lots of blog and news coverage of the conference - ABC 7 was also there.

Prosper Days '08 kicks off

Here's the first mainstream media report on Prosper Days:

SF Business Times - Prosper CEO sees company benefiting from credit crunch

"Prosper CEO Chris Larsen said Monday that the San Francisco company is benefiting from the credit crunch that's sending more lenders and borrowers to the person-to-person lending marketplace.

More people with good credit are coming to Prosper as home equity loans and credit cards become harder to obtain, Larsen told 350 people attending the company's Prosper Days in San Francisco.

"Banks are retrenching so aggressively," he said. Prosper lenders have also pulled back on loans made to subprime borrowers.

Larsen also anticipates more people might be willing to lend on Prosper as rates fall on other investments following the Fed's dramatic rate cuts.

...Lenders attending Prosper Days made it clear that they're eager for the company to do more to crack down on fraud, even as Larsen touted Prosper's first conviction for someone committing fraud through Prosper."

According to posts by lenders on Prosper.org's forum and IRC, the man convicted of fraud on Prosper is Jehoshua Sean Kilen. The News Tribune reported on the case in November 2007 without mentioning Prosper:

Lakewood man off to prison for bank fraud

Lakewood resident Jehoshua Sean Kilen was sentenced Friday to 18 months in federal prison after being convicted of bank fraud, the U.S. Attorney's Office reported in a news release Friday.

Kilen, a former employee of KeyBank, used insider information to identify inactive accounts that still had money in them. Some of the accounts were inactive because the customer had died, according to the release.

Kilen, 27, would transfer money from the inactive accounts into accounts he could withdraw cash from, federal authorities said. All told, he got away with $138,000 before getting caught.
The long arm of the law caught up with him in California in February and pleaded guilty in May in Tacoma.

Prosper unveils individual portfolio plans and improves search

Prosper rolled out several upgrades to their website ahead of Prosper Days. Last month Prosper lender HollowOak polled lenders on what upgrades might be coming. There may still be new features announced at Prosper Days but here's how we fared so far:

• The secondary market for loans
• Increase in the minimum credit grade that may create a listing
• Publication of legal actions against defaulting borrowers - Prosper did announce they would sue select delinquent borrowers. This, however, was not tied to the upgrade last night.
• Increase loans servicing fees - Prosper already raised borrower's fees a couple weeks ago.
• Increase state rate caps - Prosper did raise the interest rate cap in the District of Columbia from 6% to 24%. However, Arkansas, Delaware, Kentucky, and Tennessee have had interest rate caps lowered based on the change in federal interest rates.
• A national Prosper license - Lending Club is national but we are still waiting on Prosper
• Increased options on the search loans feature more granular credit data - Search options are improved but it does not feature credit data. Verified friends were added to the search feature.
• Credit report from more than one credit reporting agency
• Reduced minimum bid size - Prosper is at $50. Lending Club is at $25. We found most Prosper lenders do not diversify. In fact, a full 70% have less than 20 loans. A lower minimum bid size would help Prosper lenders diversify.
• Lenders can create their own portfolios - Yes! A nice upgrade here.
• Lenders can publicize their portfolios for other lenders to follow - Yes! It can be shared on your member page.
• Stock options for long-time lenders
• 3rd loans for borrowers - No, but they did change the eligibility criteria for borrowers who wish to create a listing for a 2nd loan, raising the minimum number of recent consecutive on-time payments from 2 to 6 months.
• Borrower refinancing their loans directly
• Revolving credit loans
• The entry of corporate lenders - Globefunder is the best P2P lending option for corporate lenders right now.
• Changes (unspecified) to loan verification - Lenders will no longer see the "Bank account verified" icon. Borrowers do not receive a loan until their bank account is verified so Prosper views this as an unnecessary item to publicize. Andrew Martinez-Fonts from Prosper says, "bank account verification is rarely the item that prevents origination."
• Streamlined borrowing for AA-B credit grades
• Enhancements to the Friends and Endorsements program - No, but Prosper did raise the referral bonus from $35 to $50.
• Complete elimination of groups

Again, there may still be new features announced at Prosper Days but these are the website upgrades. Prosper has detailed information on their blog and I've republished it below:

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.

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 friendsBids from friends (#): Total number of bids from unique friendsEndorsements: Number of endorsements from the borrower’s verified friendsFriends: Number of verified friends the borrower has

Bidding via API

You can now bid via the API with your personal account. Each account must be activated to allow API bidding. Send an email to APIServices@prosper.com to enable API bidding on your personal account.

Prosper expects 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.

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.

Lenders can use this to look back at loans made in the past and determine which bidding strategies are working, and which are not.

2nd Loan Criteria Changed

Prosper updated the eligibility criteria for borrowers who wish to create a listing for a 2nd loan, 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.

“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. 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.

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.

Prosper Announces Second Annual Prosper Days Conference

Prosper has announced it's second annual Prosper Day's conference, and is now taking reservations. Prosper Days is a one and a half day conference that brings together active lenders, group leaders, and borrowers for networking and education on how Prosper works. Prosper CEO Chris Larsen is scheduled to give the keynote address followed by a series classes such as "Lending 101" and "Collections with Doug Fuller". Noticeably absent from this year's Prosper Day's is anything related to Prosper Groups. Groups and Group Leaders were a big part of last year's Prosper Days, but after changing the structure of groups they play a much smaller role in the Prosper community.