Can borrowers establish some method in "advertising" their credit reports to potential private lenders? I have a FICO (?) score above average, but would love to leverage my score for individual lenders as a way to increase not only my fiscal responsibility, but on a personal, network-thingy like way. My bank is impersonal, but the advantage of borrowing from an individual is that it puts me in a position to gain access to a personal network. Am I out of whack in my thinking here? :huh:

Hi Profitsee,

I'm not sure that I completely understand what you're looking for, but by using the words "private lenders", it sounds like you're looking to be hooked up with people who have money to lend off of the site. (Am I understanding you correctly?) If that's the case, it's up to you to make it happen, but not likely something we will pursue on Prosper.

Part of the founding principle of Prosper is that borrowers and lenders can have complete anonymity. Money and credit are sensitive issues for most people, and although there are some borrowers (like yourself) who might be very public, we think most people would rather not have their identity disclosed.

Best regards,
Andrew

"Complete anonymity" is a pretty tough pill for most people to swallow. From what I can tell, this site pretty much provides a vehicle for unsecured loans. i.e. The borrower doesn't have to justify the value of any collateral. So, does the Prosper tradelines report as such (unsecured) to the credit bureau agencies? Most lenders I know don't consider unsecured debt as a "qualifying" tradeline when performing underwriting....so I'm not sure this helps the borrowers much. Maybe I'm just speculating.

However, the thing that makes me reluctant to join in as a lender is the fact that I can't see even a privacy-protected credit bureau report. If anonymity is to be preserved, certainly there are tools or algorithms that can mask sensitive information on the CBRs. Why not make these available to potential lenders?

What kind of OFAC controls are in place, if any? Gotta love the PATRIOT Act.

...Because once you have the CBR's pulled, in theory, you could create custom underwriting agents to run rules against the CBR data....and the high-powered lenders could have this automatic underwriting agent refer "promising" deals to their email inbox. That might be neat.

Very interesting concept overall, guys. Congratulations on the launch.