Sometimes there are events and phenomena that the brain fails to see or simply chooses to ignore, as the range of scope or scale is just too hard to contemplate.
When any self-respecting schoolboy is asked which is the nearest planet he will always answer Venus, but, of course, it is Earth. We just don’t see it because the scale is just too big to go around trying to come to terms with its practical massiveness.
This is also true of the internet. I’ve had a personal e-mail address for 10 years now and started to use the net extensively since then. This is not a very long period of time, but significant change has been underway since then.
I remember wishing to renew my car insurance 10 years ago and typing in to a search engine ‘compare motor insurance’.
Encouragingly, a number of search results came back, but disappointingly all the sites were ‘corporate’ and there was no way of transacting with them, let alone comparing them. However, my instinct was to shop around and compare.
Enabling media
Since then easy and good value broadband has come to market allowing sites to be much more useful and enabling web 2.0 – lots of different types of media from easy to fill in surveys, to sound, music and video to make content either more accessible or engaging.
Companies have been connecting their back office data to the net allowing for easy online banking, eradicating the need for paper utility bills, even history of your travel on the London underground if you use an Oyster Card.
Comparison sites have thrived in the environment of consumer comparison instinct, and successful companies have set themselves up in advising how to improve one’s listings in the search engines, monitor traffic and even consult on heuristic evaluations – usability to you and me.
Marketing companies have set themselves up specialising in website optimisation of particular search terms and proliferating hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of affiliated websites to cast a wide net to capture as many of the potential customers looking for products and services available on the internet.
Sometimes this activity is done for a particular firm to increase their exposure on the net. There are also approved and unapproved ways of doing this. BMW was famously banned from Google for a month for contravening the rules.
Some firms do it to improve their own exposure and sales and some do it speculatively in a market to generate leads to be sold on to businesses that do not have the skill or budget to adopt the specialist marketing skills required to get business from what is called ‘natural search’.
Easy to miss
This is where we are, coming to the end of the first decade of mass market internet. If half a dozen new brands had set up in all of the 1,000 high streets up and down the country with large colourful adverts (which wouldn’t be subject to Financial Promotions rules – and why should they be as they would not be regulated enterprises?) promoting cheaper mortgage to passers by, I think we would all be interested.
Especially if these hypothetical businesses were then willing to pass on all their enquiries to mortgage intermediaries for a fee. However, there is no physical presence on the high street for us to notice so it is easy for us to miss the obvious, like the schoolboy’s solar system question.
Today, the vast majority of new and existing mortgage borrowers go to the internet to assess what is available. This may be a price search or a comparative search or even a brand search of a particular lender they have been with or they have been told about by a friend.
There aren’t a few hundred or thousand high street outlets, there are millions in homes and offices the length and breadth of the country in the form of a computer screen, mouse and broadband connection.
Once searching, they are met by a very thin and impenetrable layer of mortgage affiliate companies all willing to ask a few simple questions to get someone to call them back. These are the contemporary truths about access to the mortgage advice market.
Setting standards
The Association of Mortgage Intermediaries does not have any issues with the way that the internet works, indeed a paid for mortgage lead can represent very good value for money compared to the entry and ongoing costs of search engine optimisation marketing programs.
However, there are some risks around the opaqueness of promotions for which currently mortgage intermediaries could be liable.
This is why AMI is talking to lead generation companies to invite them to discuss a set of standards that could be adhered to, enabling some comfort around the responsibilities of marketing mortgages in this both regulated an online world.
