Proper, a company that offers a peer-to-peer lending marketplace, has announced that it has entered into a letter of intent with new and existing investors for a Series D round of funding in the range of $13.3 million and $15.8 million.
Prosper is expecting to close on the deal no later than April 15th, 2010. The company has raised $43 million to date.
In its press release, Prosper Marketplace took a jab at competitor Lending Club by stating that it had crossed the $1 billion consumer loan demand mark in March 2008, a milestone that Lending Club just passed. Prosper also commented that it has now seen a total of $1.8 billion in loan demand.
“As peer-to-peer lending enters the next stage of its evolution, it is clear that the industry will become a third way of banking,” said Chris Larsen, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Prosper in a statement. “A way of consumer lending that is more durable and transparent than the now discredited Wall Street securitization schemes; more opportunistic for lenders; and fairer for borrowers compared to credit card companies in particular.”
Larsen continued, “With the persistent disruption of the traditional banking system, there is a world of opportunity to continue to drive great loan assets to our lenders. Our approach to the risk/return tradeoff is disciplined and being honed by Prosper’s world class risk and analytics leadership, and the richest, thickest set of peer-to-peer lending data available. The result is dramatically improved lender performance.”
