Ian Thorpe, Australia's greatest Olympian, has become a mortgage broker, of sorts.
The former world-beating swimmer is a partner in a new website, launched yesterday, that matches banks and mortgage lenders with potential borrowers.Once a borrower is registered on the site, lenders bid in a live auction for the right to lend that person money, offering the cheapest rate they can to win their business.
Called ziggy-bid it runs on a similar principle to eBay, except the bidders are the lenders, and they're competing for business by offering low rates and promising excellent service. "I'm so excited by it," Thorpe said. "I was introduced to the concept about a year ago and loved it. It takes away all of the daunting elements about applying for a mortgage and introduces healthy competition into the market as the banks vie for your business."
Home buyers and investors simply register their details on the site, including some basic information about income and outgoings, type or property and rough location, and then stipulate a time frame of between one and five days as a deadline for receiving lenders' bids.
Fifteen lenders have signed up, including all the big banks.
"The longer you give lenders to assess your situation, the better your rate is likely to be, but it does give you the option of asking for a very quick decision," Thorpe said.
"You then get to pick from the best rate or the best service, because we also rate each lender on a customer service basis - usually about how quickly the lender will approve loans and the feedback we get from other borrowers - just like eBay.
"And we also calculate what we call a 'ziggy-rate', which takes into account all of the fees and enables you to accurately compare the true cost of the mortgage. It's all very clever and transparent."
The site runs on similar lines to bid-my-loan which also allows lenders to bid for borrowers' business, but not usually in such short time periods.
