In last night's update, they updated the myaccount/lending page to introduce the "charge-off" terminology. However, all they did was to replace the word "default" with "charge-off". They did NOT change the calculations. They still show "4+ months late" loan counts seperately. Also, the "net charge-offs" under "lending performance" shows only the principal of the defaulted loans, not the "4+ months late" charged-off loans. Same numbers as before. Only labels changed.
This is inconsistent with the use of the words "charge-offs" on the performance page, where "charge-off" includes both the "4+ months late" loans and the "default" loans added together.
Fred, if I read between the lines in Andrew's blog post, they have now instituted new programming and as the loans roll past (their next payment due date?) a certain criterion, they will move into the new category. Hence this process will complete "over the next 30 days."
That's my best and most favorable interpretation of this.
The less kind one is starting to wonder how all this is dovetailing in with Post Charge-off Collections and when and how I'm ever going to see even the pittance I would have gotten if Prosper had kept to their part of the Lender's agreement and sold the damn lates to the JDBs.
At the very least Prosper owes us an explanation for what conditions the JDBs imposed that was unacceptable to Prosper.
See also my
other post regarding Andrew's blog post and his referral in there that they are *now* sending "due in full" acceleration notices to delinquent borrowers. The wording seems to imply that they might never have done so in the past.
That really gravely concerns me.
ETA: on reflection, there is another uncharitable characterization one could make regarding this gradual process. If the process was implemented with immediate effect, then the entire Prosper lender community would have woke up this morning with a few million dollars less in account value.
This way, it will be written off gradually over the next 30 days, thus not being so immediate for the majority of lenders.
ETA 2: Just went to look it up. The charge-off line in Prosper's Performance tab has $19+ million of bad loans on it. What we can't tell anymore is how many of those have actually been sold and how many of those are now hanging over us, ready to drop in the next 30 days.
Once again, Prosper's accounting changes keep obscuring data that was previously available. Before, we could see bad debt on Prosper's books and bad debt that was sold off. Now they seem to have just merged these categories into one lump sum.
[expletive deleted]