When Prosper introduced Quick Invest in July of this year they discontinued their automated plans. These plans were very popular with p2p investors because it meant you could invest in loans that met your filtering criteria without having to login to Prosper.com.
At the time many investors expressed disappointment about the end of automated plans. Well the good new is they are back…with a slight difference.
Last night Prosper introduced Automated Quick Invest (as well as some cosmetic changes to the My Account screen). It is a simple process that allows investors to use saved searches to invest in new loans without having to login. If you have used Quick Invest you will find this new feature very easy to use.
There are really just two steps. Create a Saved Search based on your filtering criteria and then set the maximum investment amount per loan. You will be notified via email whenever a Quick Invest order takes place or you will be able to see them in your Pending Investments screen.
Automated Quick Invest Levels the Playing Field
One of the unpublicized features of Automated Quick Invest is that it levels the playing field between large institutional investors and the small retail investors. I have written before about big investors like Worth-blanket2 investing in an entire loan leaving little or nothing for the retail investors.
With the new system they will not be able to bully their way into every loan they would like. The way the system works is that it queues up all the investors using Automated Quick Invest who want a particular loan and then randomly picks investors until the loan is completely funded. So occasionally you may miss out on a loan but you have just as much chance of scoring an investment as the larger investors.
I think this is a great move by Prosper. I have already signed up for this new way of automated investing and I will be thankful not to have to login twice a day at 9am and 5pm to make sure I find all the loans that meet my strict criteria.
What do other Prosper investors think? Will you be using Automated Quick Invest? As always, I am interested to hear your comments.
