Prosper CEO says P2P lending could reboot economy

In advance of the Finovate ("Financial Innovation") conference that kicks off on Tuesday in San Francisco, I talked with Chris Larsen about his peer-to-peer lending company, Prosper. The prospects for peer-to-peer lending dimmed last year when the Securities and Exchange Commission decided to regulate some of the P2P financial instruments as securities; this forced P2P lending companies to retrench as they'd previously been treated more like banks. Prosper itself shut down its lending platform six months ago.

However, California in particular is getting ahead of the game and has given Prosper the green light to start up again and to operate its latest service, a trading platform called Open Market that lets any financial institution securitize (package and re-sell) its portfolio of loans to individual P2P lenders...

CNet: Prosper CEO says P2P lending could reboot economy