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iBANK LAUNCHES LOAN MATCHING TOOLCOSTA MESA, CALIF. (Nov. 16, 2005) - iBank, an online broker of commercial loans and mortgages, is now positioning itself as the LendingTree for small business loans, in a bid to help banks lower their marketing costs. In addition, iBank wants to increase traffic and sales on its web site.
On Nov. 1, the company, a unit of Credentrust Software, launched a search engine that matches small businesses seeking various forms of capital with financial institutions.
By asking the small business to enter four search criteria and using a web "crawler" to cull information from banks' web sites, iBank proposes to help small businesses find the right lender faster.
"Small business lenders want to target their advertising dollars to their portfolio needs," said Thomas Markel, iBank's chairman and chief executive. "A lot of lenders have [stopped advertising on the large search engines] because they had to go through hundreds of applications before they could find a deal they could fund."
At www.ibank.com, small business owners enter the loan category, loan type, the amount of money needed, and the state in which they are located, Markel said. The search engine returns a list of lenders ranked by how well their products match the criteria.
In a test performed by Small Business Banking News on the day of the service's launch, a search for a $250,000 loan to buy a business in Hawaii returned 141 web pages, about 90% of which were legitimate banking sources.
However, some of the results the search engine returned were unrelated to banking, including a page from FindLaw that addressed legal resources for people suffering from mesothelioma or other asbestos-related injuries.
Markel was unable to explain why such pages appeared. "I hope that's a rare occurrence," he said. "They must have escaped our filters."
Banks can appear more prominently on the iBank results' list by paying to take part in a Classified Campaign. Paid listings, however, appear separately from other search results, Markel said.
Paid listings will suit lenders that do not want to alter their web pages - adding information such as the loan amounts available for a specific loan type - to suit iBank's search algorithm, or for banks that want to appear on the first page of the results listing, albeit in the classified section, Markel said.
Classified listings are priced on a perclick basis, with the cost varying in proportion to the position requested, Markel said.
Banks can also choose to become an iBank Premier Campaign Lender, a service that requires the small business to input answers to as many as 16 prequalification questions. Leads that match the lender's target customer are delivered to the bank each day. Premier lenders pay $199 for training, $30 a month for system access, and a fee for each qualified lead.
iBank has about 240 lenders in its commercial lending network, which also allows small businesses to prepare loan packages online. About 60,000 small businesses a month visit iBank.com, Markel said. -V.R.
About www.iBank.com
Based in Costa Mesa, Calif., www.iBank.com, America's largest small business lending engine, has become a commercial lending marketplace for businesses seeking small business loans, equipment leasing, and commercial and home mortgage loans in real time. Formed in 1999, www.iBank.com utilizes advanced search engine technology that enables borrowers to create a professional loan/lease package online, connect with more than 225 lenders using pre-qualification criteria and close loans faster. The whole process, when compared to manually preparing separate loan packages and finding the right lenders eliminates about two-thirds of the time, cuts 90% of the cost involved.
By Small Business Banking News
A Royal Media Group Publication
www.banknet360.com
