The following e-mail will be sent on your behalf.

 has sent the following story to you from ElectricNews.net.

The story is available from https://electricnews.net/news.html?code=760178

New finance site aims at Irish market
Thursday, November 23 2000
by Paul Drury


A new Irish financial products Web site, Finance2u.com, has been launched by
Vantage Software with an initial investment of IEP1.7 million.

The site offers motor insurance on-line and also allows visitors to select from a
wide range of mortgage loans, credit cards, general insurance and life insurance
products.



The company says that the site was developed to ensure that an individual's
personal details are kept in databases on the secure finance2u servers and not
transmitted over the Internet. Instead, banks and insurance companies will log-on
to the site under controlled conditions to view the applications consumers have
made to them. 



The new site will compete with solmon.com, the financial services site launched
in September by former Prudential director Adrian Daly. A number of other Irish
sites focus on just providing insurance on-line, including www.123.ie which offer
instant insurance quotes and www.getcover.com which focuses on travel insurance.



This sector of the business-to-consumer (B2C) industry remains buoyant. Bank of
Ireland subsidiary Bristol & West paid STG26m just a few weeks ago for a personal
finance Web site called Moneyextra.com in the UK.



The site cost IEP1.2 million to launch and a further IEP500,000 would be spent on
advertising over the next three months. Visitors to the site will be able to
research, compare and apply for loans, mortgages, insurance, credit cards, life
assurance, pensions, savings and investments. They can also search for products
tailored to their personal circumstances and complete on-line applications for
services provided by a number of Finance2u.com partners. 



The site also has a news section, a stockbroking section supplied by Davy's, a
glossary and a range of calculators.