Comments on: What Happened to Prosper.com?

By: Debt Consolidation Loans from Peer Lending Sites

Debt Consolidation Loans from Peer Lending Sites — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 02:51:55 +0000

[...] provide evidence that the loan is having the desired impact. Therefore, if you choose to seek a debt consolidation loan from a peer lending service, prepare for lenders to have a little more insight into your family’s daily life than you would [...]

By: admin

admin — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:24:27 +0000

Thanks for the info!

By: P2P Lending News

P2P Lending News — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 23:13:47 +0000

Pertuity Direct has a mutual fund-like approach. They're very new (<3 months old), so you won't get much in the way of track record, but you can effectively hand them their money and they'll take care of the rest.

By: admin

admin — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:39:57 +0000

It’ll be interesting to see when a company dose a mutual fund approach. It seems to be too much of a hassle to go out and cherry-pick loans. I’d rather see a fund-type thing that I can invest in. That way, I could see some track-record of performance and use that to better compare it to other investments.

By: P2P Lending News

P2P Lending News — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:46:40 +0000

@Jakob – FairRates was the company that was shut down in Denmark. Their team was subsequently acquired by IOU Central, who has stated an intention to launch a site in the US.

In my opinion, Prosper is not dead (yet) – according to their filings with the SEC, they are following Lending Club’s lead and getting registered. It took Lending Club about 6 months, and will probably take about the same amount of time for Prosper.

By: Pinyo

Pinyo — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:14:27 +0000

Curt, I don’t think the industry is falling apart. However, it needs to mature and has a long way to go before it becomes a reliable investment opportunity.

By: Carol

Carol — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:18:33 +0000

Too bad Prosper messed it up. But Peer-to-peer lending is far from falling apart. It’s definitely getting some attention from regulators, and few companies are offering a product that makes sense, like Lending Club. I got a loan and then became a lender. Loving my 8-9% returns.

By: Curt

Curt — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:37:08 +0000

I knew the peer-to-peer lending industry would fall apart. Yet, several of the top personal finance bloggers couldn’t talk about peer-to-peer lending enough.

The idea was as good as the sub-prime lending idea. Borrowing money to people that should borrow money.

By: Jakob

Jakob — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:04:09 +0000

I like the idea of Kiva. Helping people in developing countries with loans, is a good idea. However, I do still consider this to be a risky business. You give a loan to a person, mainly based on the information from a user profile.

By: Gilbert

Gilbert — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 04:31:07 +0000

I was one of the first users on Prosper. Kind of sad to see them closed to lenders. Still hope they come back.

In the meantime, I’m having a good time investing in peer lending via Lending Club. They reopened last year after about 6 months of talking to the SEC. Their loans are doing much better, with somewhere around 4-5% defaults.

Also, there is a new company that came up with a “mutual fund” approach called Pertuity direct. Have not tried it, but it looks interesting.

If all that fails to get your attention, there is always kiva.org