SAN FRANCISCO, CA — (Marketwire) — 10/19/11 —
The Occupy Wall Street demonstrations spreading across the country are a tremendous opportunity to focus energy on changing what-s wrong with our financial system. However, effecting this change requires real action from protestors, consumers, banks and regulators.
Chris Larsen has long been regarded as a consumer advocate, a web pioneer, and a disruptor of established financial service models. As the co-founder of the first online lending company, E-LOAN, he was responsible for helping to author one of the nation-s strongest consumer financial protection laws and played a pivotal role in making credit scores available to consumers for free. This commitment to making consumer-lending markets more efficient and transparent led to his co-founding of P2P lending site Prosper.com, which removes the barriers of traditional financing.
Larsen is available to speak with media about how the energy behind the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations could lead to much-needed change in the American financial services landscape.
Larsen has specific recommendations for protestors, consumers, banks and regulators to enable the kind of innovation within the financial services sector that we-ve seen in other digital industries such as entertainment.
The changes in technology over the last five years allow for complete transformation in banking and finance. Many start-ups are working hard to make this happen but are being blocked by burdensome regulation and the protectionist measures of banks.
Larsen calls on protestors to embrace innovation, on banks to start partnering with the start-ups that they think are “out to get them,” and on regulators to stop thwarting real innovation through what he calls “legal innovation.”
Read more of Larsen-s specific recommendations:
Larsen is available by satellite and telephone from San Francisco, and in-studio allowing for travel time.
Laurie Azzano, 415-786-3317,
, a peer-to-peer lending marketplace that brings together creditworthy borrowers with individual and institutional investors, allows people to in each other in a way that is financially and socially rewarding. Individual and institutional investors invest in minimum increments of $25 on loan listings they select. In addition to credit scores, ratings and histories, investors can consider borrowers- personal loan descriptions, endorsements from friends, and community affiliations. Prosper handles the servicing of the loan on behalf of the matched borrowers and investors.
Prosper was co-founded by Chris Larsen, co-founder of E-LOAN. Prosper has raised $74.85 million in venture capital and is backed by financial and technology luminaries including, Jim Breyer of Accel Partners; Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson; Jerome Contro of Crosslink Capital, CompuCredit; Omidyar Network; Capital One Co-founder Nigel Morris of QED Investors; Court Coursey of TomorrowVentures; Larry Cheng of Volition Capital.
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Laurie Azzano
415-786-3317