Back in May, I started my loan shark practice at Prosper.com, a pioneer of web-based people-to-people lending in the nation. It has been a great learning experience so far, and I admit I am addicted -- in less than three months, I have underwritten 100 personal loans for a combined principal of $8,127, which makes me the 205th biggest lender at Prosper according to a third-party tracking service.
At the same time, I'm proud of the fact that I kept my discipline in providing personal loans. About 75% of loans in my portfolio went to borrowers with a credit score of at least 640. I also carefully price my risk into the interest rate I charged -- for example, on average I charge 27.1% for borrowers whose credit scores are less than 600, but I only charge 13.6% for borrowers with perfect credit (with score over 760).
Here is my tabulated result so far:
If you are interested, you can track my ongoing results at this page. (Yes, my screen name at Prosper is "bestbuy".)