anyone heard of this?
Prosper takes social networking and trustworthiness ratings stuff into the realm of lending. It's a peer-to-peer bank, kind of.
I really really like the idea--decentralizing the power of large banks is an incredibly appealing thing. I'm intrigued by the presence of groups that are particularly looking to lend to people who want to improve the energy efficiency of their homes, who are trying to adopt, or are overcoming bad financial decisions, etc.
I wonder how well it works. Obviously it's not a particularly low-risk investment, but traditional investments range in risk too. Also I note that for those of us with good credit ratings, the interest rates being offered are not all that low overall, and I am creeped out by the fact that they turn to traditional collection agencies so quickly.
And I wonder if you could build/improve a credit rating for use in the rest of the world through this--highly doubtful that all these individual lenders are reporting to Experian. Not that that's a bad thing. Actually, upon further reading, it seems that the folks organizing this are in fact hooked into the credit bureaus.
I think this will bear some deeper investigating, but I'm curious about others' thoughts on the model.
I really really like the idea--decentralizing the power of large banks is an incredibly appealing thing. I'm intrigued by the presence of groups that are particularly looking to lend to people who want to improve the energy efficiency of their homes, who are trying to adopt, or are overcoming bad financial decisions, etc.
I wonder how well it works. Obviously it's not a particularly low-risk investment, but traditional investments range in risk too. Also I note that for those of us with good credit ratings, the interest rates being offered are not all that low overall, and I am creeped out by the fact that they turn to traditional collection agencies so quickly.
And I wonder if you could build/improve a credit rating for use in the rest of the world through this--highly doubtful that all these individual lenders are reporting to Experian. Not that that's a bad thing. Actually, upon further reading, it seems that the folks organizing this are in fact hooked into the credit bureaus.
I think this will bear some deeper investigating, but I'm curious about others' thoughts on the model.