Mortgage companies
in need of good customers often turn to other companies who can provide them with customer leads. Typically mortgage companies would provide the lead companies with a brief and a profile of their ideal customers and then pay for a certain number of leads. Mortgage brokers also often use mortgage lead companies to help them find customers and make deals.
Many of the lead companies advertise via the internet making it easier for mortgage companies and brokers to find them and choose the right match for them. As a result business with lead companies has increased in the last few years making the market more competitive. Lead companies have had to try and find ways to distinguish themselves so that mortgages choose them to do business with and many have succeed by either covering niche markets or by diversifying to providing different types of loan leads.
One lead company that went one step further was LeadPoint which opened up a lead marketplace, enabling companies to buy and sell leads in one place. Their aim was to find a way of trading mortgage and other loan leads in a manner which benefitted both the buyer and the seller. The marketplace works by both buyers and sellers set up their own accounts. Buyers then prepay a certain amount of money and state how much they want to spend on purchasing leads, the category of the leads and their lending criteria. Sellers, who need to be verified before they can open their accounts, are then matched by their profile to the buyers. The sellers generated the leads and pass them onto the buyers who are requested by the site to give feedback on the quality of the leads they have been brought. The quality of the leads can be determined in a number of different ways but primarily buyers are looking for leads which match their criteria and are genuinely interested in the products that they are selling.
LeadPoint claim that their business is founded on experience and provides a one stop shop for loan lead buyers to source quality leads from a variety of sellers. In addition those people selling loan leads also have access to marketplace of buyers to whom they can sell their leads for good market rates. LeadPoint is the first online loan leads marketplace and claims not to influence the pricing structure that the buyers and sellers create. They have tried to create an open market place in which sellers need to work hard to provide quality leads but will be rewarded when they do so with good rates and feedback. All the transactions are managed by LeadPoint themselves and there is no direct contact between the buyers and the sellers. This is a great selling point as buying and selling loan leads is often a quick business. Customers can become ‘cold’ or their situations can change over time which means they no longer match the buyer’s criteria. So far it seems that the site is working well and providing a needed platform to enable this part of the mortgage and loans industry to succeed
