It’s not often that the purchase of a website makes the news. It happens every day. But when the website being purchased is one of the biggest rate comparison sites for mortgages in Canada today, people take notice. That’s just what’s happened with RateSupermarket.ca after it was purchased by Kanetix.
Kanetix will add RateSupermarket to its other rate comparison site, ComparaSave.com after purchasing it for an undisclosed amount (although Kanetix CEO Yousry Bissada admitted that it was “not a small sum.”) Bissada has also said that Kanetix will be hiring all of RateSupermarket’s staff – an important note in today’s age of take-overs closely followed by massive firings and lay-offs.
Bissada says that he sees rate comparison sites as being one of the first places customers go to find the best mortgage rates in the country. He knows that banks are becoming the last resort for customers, as they continue to educate themselves on where and how to get the best deals. But, he also says that sites like this will cause banks to consider changing their current structure.
“As companies like ours grow, we’ll get the market’s attention,” says Bissada. “The banks will be there, but they’re often last. They’re the ones that don’t want to change the existing world as much, but often when they jump in they jump in quite quickly.”
And, he says, offering two rate comparison sites to his customers also allows his company, as well as customers, to get the best deal. It’s not a simple matter of Kanetix wanting to have the monopoly, he says. It’s simply to offer more options. And he compares two of Canada’s biggest electronic retailers to get his point across.
“The best example I know of is Future Shop and Best Buy. They’re owned by the same people. Their strategy is: You go into one and get a price and then go into the other. Now you’ve done your shopping, you know you’ve covered a large portion of the market and have the best price possible. They don’t care which store you buy from.”
Those who were some of RateSupermarket’s biggest customers, such as Ron Butler of Butler Mortgages, also see this as a very good move on the part of Bissada.
“Yousry Bissada is someone who spends his time thinking about the future of the mortgage industry and putting down bets on where he thinks the trends lead, maximizing the value of the ‘fresh new idea’ and then selling out at the right time. Just look at his history,” Butler says.
He continues on to say,
“This is an example of experienced, successful business people putting down hard cash to purchase new distribution models for mortgages and other financial services. I would hazard a guess that….Yousry quickly discovered that the execution and cost requirements to get to the top of the Google search term “best mortgage rates” made it attractive to just buy RateSupermarket.”
