Nearly a year into its launch, Smartloans (previously featured here) has just announced a slew of newly added features to their website. These new features come at a critical time especially since the Singapore government has just announced a new housing loan limit to be applied for all housing loans granted by financial institutions. Home buyers will now only be allowed to borrow a maximum of 80% – down from the current 90%. Since Smartloans earns its revenue by taking a percentage cut of the deals closed by a referral from them, this new ruling does not bode well.
The question that now remains is whether the new features being trotted out by Smartloans is sufficient to entice property owners to continue borrowing from banks despite the lower limits.
More Features Makes For Greater Customer Lifetime Value
With the upgraded platform, site users can now (A) compare between loans for completed and uncompleted property (B) use their services for Commercial Property and (C) Renovation and Business loan services.
What SmartLoans has essentially done is to put together a comprehensive package of loan services and presented it in an easy to use and accessible. Moreover, these new additions, really make Smartloans an “all in one” loan service. Home owners can use Smartloans for both property as well as renovation loans while commercial and business investors are not left out from the action.
The inclusion of different types of loan services (which increases the lifetime value of the customer) may be key to Smartloans survival especially since commercial property loans are not affected by the new ruling and also offer far greater value compared to home loans.
More Extensive Bank Listings
With the recent addition of Citibank and CIMB to the list, SmartLoans now offers a total of 10 banks to which users can compare loan offerings from. In this way, Smartloans thus does not alienate the customer base from any bank and is set to reach out to as many people as possible.
Having said that, SmartLoans has gone a step further by helping home buyers obtain accurate monthly interest payments from these banks and will also aid users get directly get in touch with bankers who will help in getting the financing done. All this is done at no cost and this counts amongst one of the top reasons why home owners have taken to using Smartloans since its inception.
Hitting The 30 Million Milestone
Hitherto, SmartLoans has closed an estimated SGD$30 million worth of loans over the past 6 months, with an average of 500k per loan. Founder Vinod Nair promises many more loans in the pipeline.
One major contributing factor towards the success of Smartloans is its interactive user interface that Nair has brought forward from his previous inroads in (Homespace and Rentspace). This enables the user to get a complete picture of his loan commitment without initiating a second love-hate (mostly hate) affair with his calculator. Simplification of the loans process will further encourage genuine home owners to take on loans and these are the customers that Smartloans must rely on to build a firm foundation for its company.
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