Prosper.com, a company which offers a peer to peer lending marketplace to its members, has recently moved to a new loan servicing platform, which has left many of its investors unhappy with the company because of numerous individual account issues, the disappearance of performance data and the removal of the requirement to provide a reason why they want to take out loans.
When Prosper made the transition to its new loan servicing platform, the company said that it “identified and reconciled some discrepancies” and would “completing the post conversion reconciliation of impacted loans and transactions” soon. Sixteen days later, investors posting on the most popular peer to peer lending discussion forum, Prospers.org, are still complaining about various account issues that they are having with Prosper as a result of the loan servicing platform change.
Other investors have taken issue with the company because it is no longer showing its full performance data on its website, only leaving a note that says, “marketplace data temporarily unavailable.” In a blog post, Prosper said that it would be upgrading the page to work with its new loan servicing platform.
Investors are also upset with Prosper over a change in the application process for some borrowers. Prosper has made it so that some users are no longer asked to provide a description of why they are taking out a loan, making it more difficult for investors to determine which loans they should and should not fund.
Prosper.com spokeswoman responded about change, saying “Regarding the listing process for borrowers who have a high probability of funding… as we previously noted, providing a listing description on Prosper has always been optional for borrowers. Even though we have streamlined the listing process for borrowers with a high probability of funding, these borrowers can still provide a listing description at the time they preview their listing before it goes live. So the capability / option is still there, but it has indeed been deemphasized. In case it’s helpful, we wanted to provide some context about why the listing description option was deemphasized for this segment of borrowers by sharing the core thinking behind the change. “
