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How we make money

Date: 18 March 2020

RateCity is a financial product comparison and information website that is free for consumers to use.

We make money by introducing interested consumers (termed ‘Lead’ in marketing parlance) to financial institutions. A lead may be generated when you visit a financial institution’s website via a link from the RateCity website. If you visit a financial institution’s website via RateCity, we may get paid either for that visit itself, or more likely, for you “doing something” further with the financial institution – for example requesting a call, opening an account, or completing an application form on the financial institution’s website. If you request from RateCity that a licensed third party (such as a mortgage broker or a financial advisor) to get in contact with you to discuss a particular product or service taking into account your individual circumstances, then we may receive a fee or commission for referring your contact details to this third party. We also generate revenue from general advertising on the RateCity site which may be display advertising, featured products, promoted products or sponsored parts of the site which are always labeled as such.

RateCity may charge fees to third parties in relation to the following:

1) Site activity relating to the financial institutions’ products i.e. either:

Cost per Click (CPC) – where some institutions pay RateCity on the basis of receiving a consumer on their site, via a link on the RateCity site associated with their product; or

Cost per Lead (CPL) – where some institutions pay RateCity upon receipt by the institution of an enquiry for more information about one of their products which contains the contact details of the interested consumer;

Cost per Application (CPA) – where some institutions pay RateCity a fee upon the receipt of an application from a customer who was introduced to the institution via RateCity’s website;

Cost per issued Product (CPP) – where some institutions pay a fee to RateCity upon successful sale of a product (settlement of their loan, opening of account, issued card etc.) when the customer was introduced to the institution via RateCity’s website; or

A variation or combination of the above.

2) Site advertising which includes display advertising, featured products, promoted products and sponsored sections, typically calculated as:

CPM (cost per impressions model) – institutions pay according to the number of display advertising impressions placed on-site;

Sponsorship – where institutions will pay for a “Share of Voice” of the site or a section of the site. For example, a 50% share of voice for the home loans section will mean the institution’s display ads will appear on 50% of the pages served in that product area;

CPC (cost per click) – where institutions pay RateCity on the basis for the number of times consumers click on their product references within RateCity.com.au (including sponsored links, promoted products and featured products); or

A variation or combination of the above.

3) Lead introduction, where RateCity may receive a fee or commission from a financial institution, financial planner, broker or any other third party for introducing leads to them for their products or services.

When financial institutions aren’t displayed in our search results, because they have not provided RateCity with a consumer link or have a commercial relationship with RateCity, you can generally find their products in RateCity’s “A-Z directory”, by searching for that institution from a search result page, or by checking the box to “display all” results.

We try to offer as comprehensive a list as possible of financial institutions and their products. We review it regularly and update the product data daily. We are confident that consumers see a fair and reasonable set of search results, and are able to use the search and filtering capabilities of the RateCity site to find and compare a competitive range of products suitable to their needs.

Sometimes however, there are institutions or products which don’t appear in our default search results, and this can be for one of three reasons:

  • Some institutions are not in a position to accept online leads because, for example, they can only deal with customers from a certain industry, or from a limited geographic area, or because they might not be able to process any new customers at all for a period of time.
  • Some institutions won’t allow RateCity to get access to their data. 
  • Some institutions aren’t willing to pay for leads so from time to time or will not provide a suitable consumer link, we’ll exclude them from our default search results if we believe that we can still offer users a good set of search results. However, we always offer consumers the ability to see these institutions with one additional click.

RateCity has two licences issued by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) – an Australian Financial Services Licence, and an Australian Credit Licence.

Financial comparison is a growing sector in Australia and we’re able to offer consumers more information and therefore more choice which leads to greater competition in the financial services industry.

Click this link for more information About RateCity including our licence numbers and frequently asked questions. You should also read an important document called our Financial Services and Credit Guide, which explains our business in even more detail.