Anecdotal Stories Of Improving Collections

There have been some anecdotal reports that Prosper is making minor headway in improving their loan collections. It's very preliminary and sketchy, but it leaves open the possibility of progress.

First, a few members of the prospers.org forums have noticed that loans transferred to the new test collection agency have shown some life (reg required). Two loans in this group that were 4+ months are showing double-daggers (if you're unfamiliar with the term, it refers to icons that Prosper uses to indicate that incoming payments have not yet fully posted - double daggers or twin daggers indicate that a transfer has been initiated). This is encouraging since 4+ month old loans have always appeared to be lost causes. Since the sample set is unknown, it's hard to tell how effective this new agency is, but at least a few lenders have benefited from the attempt.

Second, the Penncro collection rates have been trending upward slightly. From LendingStat's blog:

Prosper said a few months back that they were going to tackle collections and try to improve collection rates (Prosper Tackles Collections). It now appears that Prosper has been keeping their end of the bargain. Penncro collection rates have now improved across all credit grades from around 12% in August to 14% in November.

In both cases, it's hard to get the full picture because there's no hard numbers (the plural of anecdote is not statistics), but the anecdotes are positive. Hopefully the quarterly collections report will arrive and fill in the details and provide a few statistics.