Online personal finance aggregator Moneygator has acquired E-Loan UK.
Moneygator is an online marketplace for personal finance products in the UK. Through moneygator.com, customers can shop for personal finance products from the leading banks and building societies in the UK. While membership is free, lenders participating in the network pay Moneygator a fee for connecting them with members.
E-Loan was set up in November 1999 by the US’ E-Loan and eVentures, and was sold to Moneygator as a result of eVentures’ closure in December 2000. Moneygator is now consolidating its mortgage offerings and relaunching E-Loan UK’s motor finance service under the Moneygator name. The technology behind the motor finance service alone cost over GBP1 million to develop and will allow customers to choose between different finance options, updated prices, and quotes.
As a result of the acquisition, Moneygator will offer a more extensive product range, including mortgages, personal loans, credit cards, and motor finance to its members. The acquisition has also resulted in an increasing number of lenders available to customers to choose from.
Retail credit products lend themselves well to online distribution, both from the point-of-view of the lender and that of the borrower. For the lender, the main advantage offered is that it is cost-efficient. For the borrower, the Internet is an efficient way of obtaining information about different lending products, while it can also reduce handling times. An aggregator site like Moneygator potentially makes the loan process even easier than it is to access different loan provider sites individually, as different loan options are presented and explained to the customer on one site. This facilitates comparisons and should decrease the amount of time needed to search for different products and providers dramatically.
The main question surrounding the service, however, is whether retail customers in the UK are ready for this type of product, or whether they prefer companies that offer a multi-channel distribution approach where both online and offline offerings are available.
