Prosper.com
The online marketplace for people-to-people lending
http://www.prosper.com

Ingenious Car Refinancing - Prosper
An interesting story about creative financing - lady pays off car loan that required expensive insurance coverage with a loan through Prosper.com, and saves a bundle.
http://www.pfadvice.com/2006/08/28/ingenious-car-refinancing-prosper/

I had heard about the concept, but hadn’t actually looked at the site before. So I poked around some. The whole idea seems pretty sound. I enjoyed the interesting listings for loans - beyond credit card debt reduction load requests, there were many entrepreneurial ideas looking for funding. I was surprised how little money these folks needed to launch their new ventures. But, hey, that’s the American way. Nice to see these people are requesting loans rather than government hand-outs - that’s refreshing. The lists of bidders and how loans get financed was very clear, but why would you bid $68.40 on a loan? Some of the “groups” were pretty scarey - their pages look like the penny stock promotion emails I get, though. All a matter of taste, I suppose.

Prosper loan performance data
https://www.prosper.com/public/lend/performance.aspx
I checked to see the track record for loan repayment. It will be interesting to see if this changes over time, especially if there are bad times ahead. Traditional financial institutions may not fare well if there are serious delinquencies, defaults and bankruptcys that seem inevidible. Will a creative lending source like Prosper.com prove to be the-next-big-thing when traditional services break and are replaced by a new online opportunity? It could happen.

Good luck, guys.