Monday, June 12, 2006

enhancements I wish prosper.com would make

I recently checked prosper.com again.
I noticed a bit I had made last Friday was beaten. While searching, I found an even better loan to fund, so I put the money there.

I am quickly learning that its best to let money sit for a few days before rushing into a bid.
When funding my account - I expect about $500 each month, I plan to dole out the money fairly slowly. It realy makes a difference in the quality of loans available.

This leads to a number of thoughts for prosper.com improvement:

1. More deal flow - I prefer medium to high grade loans - they just don't seem to have enough. I'm frequently outbid, even when I discount my bid by 1.5%. There's too much cash and too few high grade loans.

2. A better overview screen
When you logon and come to the overview screen, it's fairly useless if you've been using prosper for a while. The current overview screen has a list box with e-mails and a bunch of links to do things. This is great if it's your first time, but a waste if you're experienced.
Prosper should take hints from Schwab.com or some of the other on-line brokers.
When I log on I want to see the following things:

a. status of my loans -how much $ outstanding, is anything late and what my available cash balance is
b. if someone's late, who is late, how late are they and how much money does it involve
c. a list of my current loan bids / auctions with status on each one, including closing date and how far they are to reaching their loan goals

3. liquidity
I'd like to see a secondary market for buying and selling loans. This would facilitate my own liquidity and allow me to incorproate changes in interest rates on loan valuation.

4. elective loan syndication/floatation
Similar to how fanny mae bundles together portfolios of loans and sells them as bonds to investors. I'm 50/50 on this one as ultimately any loan sold puts me into the position of being a salesman more than an investor. Therefore, I'd prefer the syndication option be elective. Obviously any loan at a fairly low interest rate might be much more interesting to syndicate than higher profit (higher risk) loans.

What are your thoughts?

Have a wonderful day,
makingourway

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