Prosper.com Sees Debt Consolidation Hit All Time High

San Francisco - Prosper, the world’s largest peer-to-peer lending marketplace with over $190 million in loans and 930,000 members, today released statistics for January 2010. Notable in January was the increase in personal loans for debt consolidation purposes. Over the course of the last six months, debt consolidation loans have been ticking up, and in January hit an all time high of 59% of loans. Historically debt consolidation has tracked at approximately 45% of loans.

"Credit card rates have been going nowhere but up, and in the wake of the Credit Card Act they are likely continue to rise along with balance transfer and annual fees as credit card companies scramble to make up for income they were generating from egregious practices,"" said Chris Larsen, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Prosper. "Peer-to-peer lending stands to benefit from this new reality as lower fixed-rate, fully amortizing installment loans provide a clear, predictable way to knock out burdensome credit card debt."

Larsen continued, "We've always believed that credit cards provide a convenient payment mechanism, but are terrible as a financing solution. As more consumers start realizing it will take them approximately 30 years to pay off their credit card if they pay only the minimum payment each month, we think more will realize that they need to eliminate their credit card balances quickly. So seeing more people turning to Prosper to pay off destructive, high interest credit card debt is probably a trend that will continue for the foreseeable future."

Prosper January 2010 Statistics

Prosper Peer-to-Peer Borrower Loan Purpose

To learn more about Prosper Marketplace, visit www.prosper.com.
Notes offered by Prospectus.

Definitions

Borrower Rate: The interest rate borrowers pay on their Prosper personal loan.

Lender Yield: Yield percentage is the lender's effective yield net of servicing fees, based on the borrower's interest rate. The funding forecast graph (found on every P2P loan listing) will let you know the likelihood that a loan will be fully funded.

Estimated Loss Rate: Estimated average annualized loss rate is based on the historical performance of a portfolio of similar Prosper loans.

Estimated Returns: Lender yield minus estimated loss rate. This does not factor in late fees or uncollected accrued interest on defaulted loans. Actual performance may differ from estimated performance.

Funded Loans: Borrowers who post listings in the Prosper marketplace are asked how they intend to use their peer-to-peer lending personal loan. The following reflects borrowers' statements of intended use of loan proceeds and is the percentage of total dollars funded for the month. Prosper does not verify or confirm after funding how loan proceeds are used.