This is the fourth in a series of post's I'm doing on Prosper, the peer to peer lender.
See Part 1
See Part 2
See Part 3
See Part 5
My sign up bonus went through, and my automatic loan selection program has bought me into 9 loans with a final one on the way. That means I will have $500 invested in loans, and $25 in idle cash until I add more money or get some payments. The image to the left shows the nine loans. It's a nice mix of various credit grades, just like I set up for my auto loan bid program. The average interest rate is something like 18%, which is higher than my Lending Club portfolio by quite a bit. I think Prosper expects many more defaults than Lending club, which is why it projects my custom portfolio as having a real return of 7%.
Another difference in Prosper vs. Lending Club is the time it takes for a loan to finalize. Lending Club has a 14 day funding period, while Prosper has a 7 day funding period. This means that Prosper finalizes it's loans quicker, which is nice for lenders, but may not give the borrowers enough time to be funded. It seems like it always took quite a while to get my money fully invested in Lending club, while this was quick and painless. Score one for Prosper in that regard.
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