Moneysupermarket.com: Difference between revisions
| Line 51: | Line 51: | ||
*[http://www.moneysupermarket.com www.moneysupermarket.com] |
*[http://www.moneysupermarket.com www.moneysupermarket.com] |
||
*[http://www.travelsupermarket.com www.travelsupermarket.com] |
*[http://www.travelsupermarket.com www.travelsupermarket.com] |
||
*[http://www.moneygem.com www.moneygem.com (credit cards, loans, mortgages)] |
|||
*[http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main?q=&url=moneysupermarket.com moneysupermarket.com] on [[Alexa Internet| Alexa]] |
*[http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main?q=&url=moneysupermarket.com moneysupermarket.com] on [[Alexa Internet| Alexa]] |
||
Revision as of 14:20, 27 November 2007
Moneysupermarket.com, the primary business of Moneysupermarket.com Group PLC (LSE: MONY) is a UK price comparison website specialising in financial services. The website enables consumers to compare prices on a range of products, including mortgages, credit cards and loans. Its sister site, travelsupermarket.com, offers a similar comparison for travel products including flights, hotels and holidays. Moneysupermarket.com was launched in 1999.
History
The origins of moneysupermarket.com lie in a separate business launched 10 years earlier by CEO Simon Nixon.
After dropping out of his degree course at Nottingham University, Nixon spent a few months selling insurance and mortgage products[citation needed], and noticed that there were no tools available for brokers and independent financial advisors to easily check, compare and source mortgage deals in the market.
With this in mind, he launched a magazine called Brokers Update and rapidly gained several thousand subscriptions. However, within two years subscriptions had begun to plateau and Nixon realised that brokers were increasingly using computer technology to glean the information they required. He persuaded his then-girlfriend's brother, Duncan Cameron, a student in computer science, to drop out of university and build a software program that could compare market rates, which launched in 1994. It was known as Mortgage 2000. Five years later, Nixon predicted the launch by Freeserve of free access to the internet was likely, in his opinion, to precipitate widespread use of the web to research information on financial products and eventually to transact online.
In December 1999, Nixon launched moneysupermarket.com[1] to cater for this need. The new business benefited from legal, administrative and technical synergies with the existing Mortgage 2000 set-up. Aside from mortgages, the new website had two additional channels - credit cards and personal loans. The decision to expand beyond mortgages proved critical, as did successfully persuading internet portals to carry that information on a commission-sharing basis.
Today, moneysupermarket.com has some 200 "partners" who provide their users with the site's comparison tools. In 2003 the company began using so-called "intelligent robots" to obtain quotes on behalf of consumers from many different insurers and brokers. A similar service is also used to obtain data for travelsupermarket.com users, allowing the site to "scrape" data from scores of flight providers.
Further channels were added to moneysupermarket.com and the site now provides price comparisons for a great variety of products and services including broadband, mobile phones and utilities.
Criticism
Aggregation websites, such as moneysupermarket.com, have come under fire for allowing providers to create headline rates just to appear top of best buy tables. Critics have argued that best rate doesn't always mean the best product for the individual.
Others have noted that websites such as moneysupermarket.com rarely include all products on the market[2] and therefore any price comparisons are inaccurate. Certain companies do not allow their products to be compared with the rest of the market for fear of representing an unbalanced view.
Critics of price comparison websites state that a lot of the quoted prices are inaccurate, or otherwise out-of-date.
Corporate Affairs
A large proportion[citation needed] of moneysupermarket.com's revenue comes from affiliate fees paid by product providers when users purchase an item via the website. As an example, if a user makes a successful application for a credit card with Capital One, Capital One will then pay a fee to moneysupermarket.com. If the card was sourced directly through the moneysupermarket website then moneysupermarket.com will retain all the commission. If it was sourced through one of its "portal partners" (i.e. The Sunday Times), then much of the commission will be passed on to them with a portion being retained by moneysupermarket. This is known as second-level affiliation.
In addition to this, moneysupermarket.com displays banner advertising.
Flotation
In recent years speculation had been growing that moneysupermarket.com is readying itself to offer an IPO on the stock market. Newspapers are currently valuing the business at £1bn[citation needed]. On June 29, 2007 the company announced its intention to float on the London Stock Exchange.[3]
In June 2007, Simon Nixon, who jointly founded the company with Duncan Cameron, agreed to buy most of his 47% stake for £162m. Cameron will retain a 5% stake in the company.[4] Cameron stopped working for moneysupermarket.com in 2002 but had remained a sleeping partner in the business. Nixon and Cameron are both currently joint 165th on The Sunday Times Rich List with a wealth of £480 million.