Home Buyers Searching Interest Rate Comparison Sites
Financial comparison sites say they’ve noticed a significant jump in traffic to their sites in the last month, attributing it to the big four banks rising their interest rates by almost double that of the RBA.
One financial comparison site said it had noticed an 80 per cent jump in traffic in the last month after the four major banks lifted their interest rates by almost double that of the RBA.
Mozo, a financial comparison site run by the former managing director of Virgin Money, Rohan Gamble, has been operating for the last two years, comparing financial products in Australia.
It has a database of all financial products in the market and presents to users, in the form of summary tables, interest rates, which, Mr Gamble said, helps Australians get a better deal.
He told this website that he had seen an 80 per cent jump in traffic in the last month – without changing the way the Mozo site operated – and attributed its growth to the big four banks raising their interest rates higher than that of the RBA.
‘‘I think it’s fair to say that the RBA – and the big four that followed them – have really given us the impetus of growth in the last month,’’ Mr Gamble said. ‘‘We basically have seen about an 80 per cent increase in traffic and performance on basically doing the same thing before the RBA [lifted interest rates].
He said that it was ‘‘pretty indicative’’ that people were ‘‘getting off their backsides and actually doing something about [the interest rate rise] at least at this early stage’’.
The Mozo site makes money by getting commission from financial instructions for leads and usually gets ‘‘a couple 100,000 visitors a month’’, according to Mr Gamble, and results displayed are not influenced by which financial institutions pay more for leads.
He said it was similar to websites wotif.com, realestate.com.au and webjet.com.au, which all compare products in their respective industry.
“I think the banks underestimate how savvy consumers are and I think this time they definitely have,” Mr Gamble said.