Prosper announces new features in advance of Prosper Days

Last night, Prosper announced several new features in advance of Prosper Days 2008. Since the Pre-Prosper Days Release included only relatively minor changes, I expect that additional announcements will be made during the event itself.

Here’s the preliminary scorecard for my Prosper Days predictions, based on last night’s activity:

Increase in state rate caps. Prosper announced one rate cap increase (for the District of Columbia) and four rate cap reductions (Arkansas, Delaware, Kentucky, and Tennessee), but not the across-the-board 1% increase which I predicted. (It could still happen.) On the other hand, the fact that Prosper is still tinkering with the state caps means that I was right on the money when I said there would be no announcement of a “national license.”

Lender-created portfolios. I was right on this one; lenders can now create and share their own portfolio plans.

Groups, friends, and endorsements. I speculated – rather vaguely and tentatively - that Prosper would announce enhancements to the friends and endorsements program, but would not eliminate groups (yet). Sure enough, the Pre-Prosper Release includes at least a modest enhancement: number of verified friends, number of verified endorsements, and the number and dollar amount of bids from friends are now available as criteria which lenders can use for searching listings, developing portfolio plans, and analyzing marketplace performance.

This wasn’t the wholesale incorporation of features from social networking sites that I thought might happen, and my suggestion that Prosper was seeking to benefit from borrowers who sign up their “imaginary friends” was perhaps a bit too cynical: The new features place the emphasis on friends and endorsers whose identities have been verified.

Collections. The Prosper.com website finally began to reflect the transfer of delinquent loans from Penncro to AmSher last night, just before the maintenance period. There are still reports of glitches and inconsistent data, but at least Prosper Vice President of Operations Doug Fuller will be able to report that progress has been made.

Third loans for borrowers. I predicted that this would not happen, at least not at this year’s Prosper Days, and it looks like I was right. Prosper made a wise decision to raise the eligibility requirements for second loans instead.

Changes (unspecified) to loan verification. I said “doubtful,” but I suppose the removal of the confusing “bank account verified” icon qualifies for inclusion in this category.

That’s it for now. I’ll update again once additional announcements are made.