LendingTree Making Substantial Inroads on Bank Customer Loyalty; Compete, Inc. Analysis Shows Banks Fail to Attract, Convert Consumer Home Equity Loan Applicants

Business Wire, Nov 19, 2002

Business/Technology Editors

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 19, 2002

Consumers shopping for home equity loans are increasingly choosing online lending exchange LendingTree over banks' online offerings when submitting applications, according to new consumer analysis from Compete, Inc. Compete analyzed consumer home equity loan shopping and application behavior for leading lenders Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank, Washington Mutual and LendingTree during the third quarter of 2002.

Banking executives have widely recognized that the online channel creates opportunities for growth but also can threaten existing customer relationships. Despite the current surge in home equity loans that has benefited the entire industry, banks have not succeeded in generating meaningful online interest in home equity products. Worse still, banks are converting few of the customers who do show interest.

"LendingTree's inroads are hard to ignore," said Derick Sutton, Compete's Vice President of Client Services. "They have grown rapidly, posting 80 percent annual revenue growth last quarter and facilitating $5.8 billion in closed loans. Banks that simply look the other way at online applications and customer loyalty do so at their peril."

The new Compete analysis showed that:

-- LendingTree outperforms its banking competitors. LendingTree generated more than five times the applicant volume as all four banks studied combined - over 20,000 home equity loan applications per month. Approximately 42 percent of customers who initiated an application at LendingTree completed that application, compared to an average of only 12 percent for the banks. This data suggests that LendingTree's proposition of filling out an application once and having it submitted to multiple lenders attracts a more motivated consumer.

-- Washington Mutual performs the strongest among banks. Washington Mutual generated four times the interest in home equity loans among its online banking customers than Citibank, and double that of Bank of America and Washington Mutual.

-- Bank of America is the most vulnerable to LendingTree. 3.5 times as many Bank of America online customers applied at LendingTree than applied at the Bank of America site.

-- The credit quality of applicants at LendingTree was similar to those at the four banks, since the demographic profiles and online banking activity of applicants at LendingTree were similar to the overall applicant pools for the four banks.

Compete's analysis points to ways banks can better drive customer loyalty. "Banks should consider more aggressive tactics - including more prominent and attractive product bundling promotions - to drive cross-selling efforts," added Sutton. "Our analysis shows that a best-of-breed online provider can make substantial progress on capturing their share of wallet. This issue would become all the more important for banks should demand for lending products decline because of less favorable interest rates."

About Compete, Inc.

Compete, Inc. focuses its Business Intelligence (BI) services on strategic business issues including demand forecasting, pricing and promotions, marketing programs and product optimization. As the first firm to incorporate terabytes of external online consumer behavior data into its BI analyses, Compete is pioneering the use of online consumer data to predict offline consumer behavior. Based on the industry's largest pool of consumer behavior data, representing over 10 million consumers, Compete provides unprecedented consumer insights that its clients convert into powerful management tools for increasing market penetration, lifetime customer revenues and marketing ROI. Compete provides its Business Intelligence Services to financial services, automotive, media and communications, and retail and consumer products companies. The company is venture-backed by leading investors, including Charles River Ventures and St. Paul Venture Capital. Compete is on the Web at www.compete.com.