Linkfest

A bit of linkage to start into the week.

On the Prosper Upgrades

• Major Prosper Upgrade: "There is a major Prosper Upgrade tonight… I apologize for not trying any other these features, but I am on vacation an thus here is a reprint of the announcement from Prosper Andrew…"
• Prosper improves lending and borrowing experience: "Prosper just announced some significant site and policy updates. Loan listings now include borrower's past activity, borrowers can make payments with their Prosper cash balance, borrower activity including all past activity will be reported to TansUnion in addition to Equifax, and the referral program has been extended through the end of the year. These changes have been well received by the Prosper community after the recent controversy."
• I was right about one thing: "I was right about the fact that Prosper was preparing a new release. Last night Prosper released a few new changes. The biggest one in my mind was the addition of a second credit bureau that they are reporting to. They still are only checking Experian when pulling credit data but if putting dings on two credit bureaus for late borrowers helps encourage them to pay up, more power to them".
• Even more data transparency - Prosper adds missing link: Prosper.com now makes the link between loans and listings available. With this new feature now everyone can see the status of the loan payments of every borrower. On the borrower profile page there is now a "Loans" tab.

Online Riot (Sigh)

• Open rebellion of lenders in Prosper forums: "Looking into the lender section at the Prosper.com forums part of the posting lenders seem to be in open rebellion. Titles of threads from the last two days include "FLASH:Prosper bans $100.000 lender", "Prosper Mng. Living Under a Rock", "Shooting the Messenger", "What happens if Prosper goes under?", "I am done lending on Prosper", "Hello Prosper Moderator", "Lender's WHO are DONE with Prosper", "My letter to Prosper", "Open letter to John Witchel""
• Prosper Blenders: "On Prosper an individual that is both a borrower and a lender has been given the nickname blender. ... It seems that after a week or so of the Prosper Forums ranting about this issue and a suspension of a major (>100K) lender for impersonating a Prosper employee, that Prosper has finally said what it will do about the issue"
• After online riot Prosper restricts some lenders, bans others from forums: "... there has been an uprising in the official Prosper forums over the last couple of days over this issue. Lenders have asked repeatedly for Prosper to force these blenders to repay their own loans with the payments they receive from their borrowers. The issue became heated in the forums over the last two weeks ..."
  

RateLadder relates a conversation with rgf on how default timing impacts ROI that's worthy of a read

I had a very interesting email exchange with RGF. (I emailed him after using his forum posts in articles last week).

Here is a portion of that email exchange on default rates over time and their affect on yield.