zcommodore

A number of people have mentioned on the Prosper forums and maybe some blogs that the total number of loans dropped in September by quite a bit. Here is a graph illustrating that point:

I suspect there are a number of reasons for this drop and it may be partly due to the removal of group rewards. I don't think that is a bad thing though since it may be better for default rates in the end in my opinion.

Anyway, one thing I noticed is that the total number of business days in September was relatively low since the month started and ended on a weekend. I decided to check my theory by counting the number of business days (excluding weekends and holidays) for each month and plotting the average dollar amount of loans made per business day.

As you can see, the number peaked in April, similar to the previous graph, but was very close to flat between August and September. Honestly, I don't know if it means a whole lot but it was an interesting way to look at things. I am curious to see October's numbers since that will be a full month without group leader rewards.

One more graph I made that isn't quite as flattering though was the total number of loans made per business day.

As you can see, the number of loans made per day did drop even when considering there were fewer business days in September.

On a lark, I created one more graph showing average size of all loans each month.

I honestly am not sure what this graph really means other than the fact that bigger loans were approved on average in September than they were in August.  The overall uptrend in the graph does seem to be good for Prosper since it makes more money from bigger loans. Now they just need to find a way to get more loans funded from month to month instead of the downtrend we've seen over the last few months.