E-Loan – Eventures First Fruit

Thursday, 22 June 2000, 11:36 am
Article: Alastair Thompson

The global expansion of the on-line lending broker E-Loan reached NZ yesterday with the official launch of E-Loan’s New Zealand arm - http://www.eloannz.co.nz.

The launch of the site is the first fruit of the recent $30 million IPO of the Craig Heatley / News Limited / Softbank venture capital fund Eventures. Eloan New Zealand is a joint venture between E-Loan.com – the US parent company and owners of the technology – and Eventures.

Turnaround from initiation of the project , to implementation, has been remarkably quick over just 2.5 months.

The site is an consumer intermediary site which enables would bel borrowers to compare the availability and costs of home loans from a range of lenders, so far 18.

The company has an initial staff of 15, including 8 loan consultants, who will be available on-line and by phone to arrange loans from 8am to roughly 10.30pm daily.

As at the launch yesterday 18 lenders were involved offering 200 loan products.

On visiting the site the viewer is asked a series of questions – how much to borrow? term? what is the value of security? do you want to repay early? Etc. The computer then generates a list of loans available calculating from the fee structure and interest rate an indicative finance rate and a monthly repayment figure.

E-Loan CEO Bruce Gordon told Scoop the launch in NZ followed launches in the UK late last year, in France and Germany shortly after, in Australia in February and in Spain two weeks ago. In addition a Japanese version of the site has been running for a year.

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In the US E-Loan is the brand-leader in a competitive market in on-line brokerage services with 25% of online brokerage share representing roughly 2.5% of the total US lending market. Collecting roughly 0.8% to 1% in commission’s it is easy to see this is a tidy earner.

Growth in turnover in the US over the last three years has been at over 100% per annum. Elsewhere Gordon says growth is very hard to forecast as the site is pioneering the market. So far the launch in Australia is described as ”steady”.

In NZ the company will be pursuing a traditional media marketing strategy starting next month and is in the process of developing relationships with significant portal sites. “Whereever our customers are on the net that is where we want to be,” Mr Gordon said.

Alastair Thompson

Scoop Publisher

Alastair Thompson is the co-founder of Scoop. He is of Scottish and Irish extraction and from Wellington, New Zealand. Alastair has 24 years experience in the media, at the Dominion, National Business Review, North & South magazine, Straight Furrow newspaper and online since 1997. He is the winner of several journalism awards for business and investigative work.

Contact Alastair Thompson

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