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According to the bank, it selected Yahoo because of its high Irish user traffic. According to Neilsen//Netratings, Yahoo is the second most popular site among Irish Internet users. The company claims that in June 2001 54 percent of the active Irish Internet audience visited the Yahoo site.
Irish Permanent's on-line mortgage offering includes a range of mortgage resources including an information guide, instant quotes, average housing prices as well a property search facility.
Sales Online, an Irish ad sales network, negotiated the content deal for Yahoo UK & Ireland.
Irish Permanent launched its mortgage service last November according to Joe Heneghan, e-commerce division director for Irish Permanent. He said Irish Permanent had done a great deal of marketing on its on-line mortgage offering and he described Yahoo as the "number one portal for Irish Permanent to link to."
He said the company was considering alliances with other Web sites but declined to expand on future deals. He declined to give specific figures for on-line mortgages that have been processed but said the company was pleased with its progress.
He also said the profile of the typical Irish Internet users was the same profile the bank was targeting for mortgages. Additionally, he explained "I don't think there is a huge psychological problem for users to get a mortgage on-line. It appeals to the type of customer who already buys on-line."
He said the process takes about 15 minutes and offers an instant response to applications followed by a more detailed response within a few hours, depending on the time of day an application was entered.
The bank has no revenue sharing agreement with Yahoo and the deal is based on an advertising and hosting arrangement which took about three months to establish.
The company has spent IEP1.5 million on the development of its on-line mortgage service thus far. Looking to the future, Heneghan said the company might look to offer additional services on its site including insurance, possibly through the bank's parent company, Irish Life & Permanent Group.
The bank's increased on-line activity comes as more financial institutions and financial services organisations expand their Internet presence. Earlier this year the analyst firm Forrester tipped open finance as a winner in this arena. Open finance is the provision of third-party financial services, such as investment funds or insurance, which are offered by a variety of financial institutions rather than a single provider.
Forrester said the movement into open finance is facilitated through e-business and on-line banking. If banks follow Forrester's advice of focusing on the PC channel for consumers and continue to adopt open finance strategies, banking in Ireland and the UK will become Internet-based and every bank will offer almost every financial service imaginable. This would also represent tremendous competition in the marketplace which should keep costs very low, according to the research company.
Irish Permanent's Yahoo Web site is at http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/imc/ and Irish Permanent can be found at http://www.irishpermanent.ie. Yahoo UK & Ireland is at http://www.yahoo.ie
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