FinanceBAM News

December 21, 2008

Mortgage leads

Filed under: Home Owner Information — admin @ 1:51 am

Many of you who read our news section will know that we are currently developing a sister service called Mortgagebam with the objective of bringing mortgage seekers and independent advisers together. To fully understand how we were going to do this, we needed to look at how the internet is currently generating mortgage leads.

What we found out was quite surprising and although it does not represent the whole mortgage market, is it worth mentioning and how Mortgagebam will address these issues.

The first thing is that many mortgage leads generated through a third party website are often only available to the highest bidder. The mortgage adviser is guaranteed exclusivity, sometimes by the mortgage seeker receiving a phone call first to qualify the lead, then that one adviser will get access to the phone number and address of that client.

Some sites put the mortgage lead into an auction, where the winning bidder gets the mortgage lead. We re not sure why a client would wait until this process is completed, but that is what we found.

The issue we see with this process is that there is no guarantee that the winning financial adviser is the right one for that client. We are not talking qualifications here we are talking about a relationship that may last 25 years.
Mortgagebam as a business is a mortgage lead or internet marketing company. It does not offer mortgages themselves, so it is all about marketing a service and hoping potential mortgage seekers will fill in a simple form.

However where things will be different to above is that all mortgage leads will be the same price. The client will see immediately who has been informed of their information and the client, not Mortgagebam will get to choose who they want to work with. Add the fact; the mortgage seeker can leave a review on the service they got from that Independent mortgage adviser, you would hope that the whole process is controlled by the customer not Mortgagebam or the mortgage adviser.

December 20, 2008

Breakdown Services League

Filed under: Motoring Issues — admin @ 11:55 pm

Back in July 2008 the good old Which magazine did a review and report on the breakdown services and as a review site, with your opinions important to us, it makes sense to share some of those from the Which League.
The clear winner was the AA with an impressive overall score of 78%, the worst performer from the 8 companies listed was Europe Assist with only 50%.

Now we are not going to list the full report as you can read it direct here at Which breakdown services league, but we do want to comment on a few things.

The first thing that comes to mind is the difference between the Green Flag score of 59% and the Direct Line score of 69%. As both these organisations are owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland, as far as we know, the Direct Line breakdown cover polices are in fact delivered by the Green Flag service. Tell us if we are wrong here!
So it is strange that there be such a difference in scores. However one reason could be the variation of breakdown cover agents that deliver the call outs. They are not employed by these companies, just follow by their rules, so there may be a message of inconsistency here.

The final issue is the noticeable absence of other companies such as Britannia Rescue, Autonational, Gem Motoring Assist , Breakdown Direct, Rescue My Car and  probably a few others we could mention. If they were part of the report, why we do not see any mention of them, to give a clearer view, especially as at least one of these has awards from national magazines for their breakdown cover services so the members of the public must be using these companies.

Anyway, for now read the information from Which as it is the most comprehensive we have.

December 11, 2008

AA Breakdown Cover As A Gift

Filed under: Motoring Issues — admin @ 4:27 pm

Trying to find the right Christmas present for the person who has everything can be a nightmare at the best of times, but now during the financially hard hitting times, there are those who could do a few practical gifts this Christmas.

One solution could be to buy breakdown cover as a gift, either for someone who doesn’t think they need it, or maybe someone who may just not renew their current policy due to money problems. The breakdown cover organisations have never really been that good at marketing the fact that you can buy a breakdown cover policy for someone else and it is not until you visit their websites as an afterthought, which you can find out, that in most cases you can.

The AA, has just put a small banner on their homepage leading to the gift membership page, which pretty much explains it all. There is some considerations though, before you go to the AA Breakdown Cover site credit card in hand, thinking you have solved a gift problem. You will need to spend a bit of time establishing, if the policy you will buy for that person will suit their needs. No point in buying a breakdown cover policy, thinking it covers that car and only covers the driver, or maybe buying a roadside assistance option, when they do a lot of mileage away for home and really need a policy that will get their car and themselves home, should they breakdown.

At the time of writing the gift breakdown cover options start from ?39, which is a bit more that if you were to buy the cheap breakdown cover option yourself, so we must assume, there is some sort of gift package, card that comes with it. I suppose it could be an administration charge also.

December 9, 2008

What Has Been Happening

Filed under: Finance General — admin @ 1:33 pm

Once again we have been slow updating some financial news on Financebam, we will get it right soon.
Let’s start with an update on some financial news items over the last few weeks that will only scratch the surface of what really happened.

Yesterday it was mentioned that even though the high street is taking a battering with sales leading up to Christmas, there is a different story for online sales. Not only is it expected that sales will stay at the same level than last year, but there is real evidence, that credit crunch or not, sales will increase for online purchases compared to last year.  Nothing was mentioned about the online insurance market, such as car insurance or breakdown cover.

We clearly have different priorities to the USA. We have easily let our motoring history disappear when the car factories were unable to compete with Japanese and foreign cars imported to us. The message has always been clear in the UK, that if a business is unsustainable then it is right for it to fail, job losses or not.  It is not seen this way in other European countries that have no problem saving their national car manufacturing forms by pumping in tax payer’s money.

This trend has crossed the Atlantic, which the big car manufacturers, Ford, General Motors and Chrysler all going cap in hand to the American government for $34b or so to keep them afloat.

Insurance comparison sites have come under some criticism recently, stating they do not do a though enough job of helping customers buy the right insurance. It is claimed that insurance comparison sites, are good at delivering prices, but not so good at ensuring all the facts and conditions of each policy is explained in enough details.

Last week saw another huge drop in bank landing rates, down to an astonishing 2% base rate, in an attempt to get people borrowing and banks lending especially in the mortgage market. Many however are still complaining that they have not yet seen a reduction in their mortgage payments from the last reduction, never mind this further recent one.

It was also mentioned that the government would allow a 2 year holiday (if you could call it that) on interest payments, should you lose your job. This mortgage interest will accumulate and you will have to pay it in the end. Should your home continue to drop in value, this could create some serious negative equity. However, should home prices start to rise again; this could be the answer to giving customers some piece of mind with mortgage payments.

Finally the announcement that Honda have pulled out of Formula One should not have been a surprise in hindsight.  How can they justify spending £350 on making 2 cars go around a track faster, when thousands of jobs are on the line and factories are being shut, to keep costs down, with compounds full of unsold cars.

Powered by WordPress