Affiliate opinion on Sub-Prime Remortgage programs

[Andrew Copeland]

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Hi all,

As some of you may know, I manage the finance and insurance vertical for Webgains.

The finance merchants we have on the network vary between remortgages, secured loans, debt consolidation and prepaid cards. However, with the exception of our prepaid card and debt consolidation merchants, the majority of the others (remo and loan) fall into the sub-prime market.

Recently, I've noticed that the popularity of the sub-prime merchants has waned a little while the performance of the IVA and card merchants has rocketed. After speaking to a few affiliates, the general feedback has been that sub-prime leads (genuine newly generated leads direct to the merchant site...not leads collected then sold in batch) are not as attractive as they used to be.

Some affiliates have mentioned the shake up in the sub-prime market, others the boom in the card/IVA markets as the reason for them changing their focus to other products.

I was just wondering if this is specific to those affiliates or if everyone is looking to promote other products instead of sub prime remo/loans?

Any insight into what you guys are looking for not only helps me manage my merchants correctly but also helps me grow the network (with the help of our sales guys of course ) in the right direction.

Thanks for the help folks.

[Michael_Anthony]

It's not that these products are less popular, but more that there are very small volumes available online. For every poor credit remortgage application an affiliate can generate, he/she can generate 10-20 prime applications.

Which means that the supply of the adverse credit leads is outstripped by demand, which in turn means that there are many merchants chasing very few leads. The net outcome of which is that the prices go sky high and only those merchants paying top dollar get any leads. Why else would the average good credit remo lead be worth £15-£30 and a bad credit one be worth £100-£200?

I have a feeling that this post was initiated as a result of one or several of your merchants complaining about poor volumes - the answer is to tell them to pay more.

Like you, we have no shortage of buyers for these poor credit products, but unless the merchants are paying top dollar you will definitely have a severe shortage of sellers.

The IVA market is similar, but less mature, and I would warn any affiliate/network looking to enter this market to think twice - the pie is already pretty well sliced up and the returns are much lower than those available from loans and mortgages.

This advice is provided free of charge because I am bored and very helpful. Please vote for me as affiliate superstar of the world at the forthcoming a4u mutual back slapping event

[Andrew Copeland]

Thanks for the feedback.

Yup, pretty much confirms what I thought. I just didn't want to generalise the feedback of a few affiliates assuming everyone thought the same way.

Cheers

Andy

[rick_n123]

Here is an observation that i made from personal experience:
I am an affiliate generating leads for secured loans and remortgages, and just recently I was testing with a merchant interested in adverse credit remo leads. I was getting the leads in such proportion: about 6-7 leads where customers indicated "excellent" credit to one "adverse". The merchant was taking ALL of those leads just to see how they go for the test.
What came out of it was the following: Many of "excellent" credit customers turned out to have far from "excellent" credit -- when merchant was calling them and doing a credit search it turned out that many of them did qualify as "adverse".
So, IMHO, the best thing that would be beneficial for merchants to do in order to get the most out of this "limited supply/high demand" lead situation -- is to buy ALL remortgage leads from an affiliate (of course the purchase price should be some kind of an average allowing for a certain percentage of good cerdit leads) -- then they would be capturing all qualifying customers.
As an affiliate, i would love to have this kind of deal.

[Michael_Anthony]

And as a merchant, you'd get raped.

[magenta]

For every poor credit remortgage application an affiliate can generate, he/she can generate 10-20 prime applications.

I'd be suprised if that turned out to be the case; prime lenders are more visible, much easier to find i.e. if you have a good credit rating and you need a credit card, why apply through a third party rather than go straight to your bank?
sub-prime lenders on the other hand are not so well known so people would have to search for them.