Personal Loans Online Industry Report

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Which New Zealand Personal Loans providers are maximising their market share online?

Find out which personal loans providers are taking the lead in organic search and how they’re doing it.

FIRST has investigated the organic search engine rankings for NZ consumer searches focused on personal loans, utilising FIRST’s Ranking Based Reach (RBR) analysis framework. In addition, a consumer survey was carried out to discover what is most important for Kiwis wishing to apply for personal loans.

Analysed personal loans websites include:

* anz.co.nz
* asb.co.nz
* financenow.co.nz
* firstcreditunion.co.nz
* gemoney.co.nz
* harmoney.com
* hsbc.co.nz
* instantfinance.co.nz
* kiwibank.co.nz
* maxloans.co.nz
* rapidloans.co.nz
* westpac.co.nz

In this Personal Loans Online Industry Report we discovered:

  • In our consumer survey, it was revealed that three out of four Kiwis tend to consider getting loans from banks instead of non-bank loan providers. Additionally, in choosing a personal loan provider, Kiwis consider these as very important factors – low interest rates, low fees; and reputation and credibility.
  • Currently, Finance Now stands out in the search landscape followed by ANZ and Max Loans capturing big proportion of the voice thanks to prominent organic presence.
  • Majority of the analysed personal loan providers have low RBR scores, below 30%.
  • Due to low RBR scores of majority of the personal loans providers, search results are broadly dispersed among a wide range of competitors. In the competitive and margin-driven personal loans market, providers need to optimise the most cost effective marketing channel – search.
  • Popular search phrases are missing from most sites and in most cases very little is being done with organic search. By improving their RBR score, they will be able to seize opportunities to boost online sales revenues.
  • A considered digital strategy that integrates both organic and paid search should be a key customer acquisition and revenue driver for personal loan providers.

Rankings Based Reach Natural Search

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FIRST uses its bespoke metric called RBR (Ranking Based Reach) to estimate how well each company is ranking in search engines. RBR provides a simple way to compare a website’s search engine rankings with its competitors. RBR is an estimate of the percentage of available search traffic a website will receive for a set of phrases – this gives the sites share of search or reach. It is weighted based on the popularity of each search phrase and the relative click through rate (CTR) of each ranking position.