Metasearch for financial products comes to Malaysia

Travel insurance, credit cards, and very soon also home loans, personal loans and car insurance… a new online service called GoBear.com (GoBear) would compare all the available financial products in those categories that are out there in the market, and basically lay bare all the essential information that users need to make an informed purchase. 

Calling themselves a metasearch service because it is a sophisticated search engine that focuses on only one vertical; financial products and services; GoBear.com compares services, ranks them with a “mathematical algorithm” and shares its findings with visitors to their site.

(L-R): Andre and Iskandar launch GoBear in Malaysia

GoBear Country Director Iskandar Ezzahuddin shared that for the travel industry today, 40-percent of consumers would go to a metasearch engine service, a service that did not even exist 10 years ago. Twenty-percent of consumers would book their travel tickets via brokers and agents while another 30-percent do this directly at the airline’s website.

“We expect to see the same pattern in ten years’ time, for the financial products industry,” he also said.

This would bode well for GoBear which claims it is the first comparison service of its kind in Asia.

But, how exactly does it make money if their results and rankings are unbiased, and they do not accept commissions from their business partners aka owners of the products and services which they are comparing?

Business model

While GoBear compares every product in the market, for a particular category; ie. there are over 40 for travel insurance and 192 for credit cards; GoBear gives product owners the choice of opting out of being listed in their service.

Those who do remain listed on GoBear’s service, would pay GoBear.com for every click to their website.

Iskandar pointed out that every click is qualified and of high-quality; potential buyers would have to fill in their details and go through a few steps on GoBear before entering their partners’ pages.

“So the highest quality traffic is being sent to our partner’s sites,” he emphasised, pointing out that conversion rates (from potential customers to paying customers) are very high, and that this method is the cheapest way to acquire customers, in the market.

Localised big data

CEO, Andre Hesselink had also said that GoBear is a global brand in the making but it is focused on being local. “Together with a team of Malaysian specialists, we continue to enhance the seamless user experience with search, filter and insurance quotes.”

Not to mention, GoBear would be collecting a wealth of information about what Malaysians are looking for in the financial services segment, something that many financial products and services companies would pay top dollar for.

GoBear recorded 50-percent month-on-month growth in usage with over 1.2 million users since it first debuted in Singapore and Thailand.