Metasearch engine gives Pinoys option to choose financial products
MORE Filipinos are expected to avail of insurance and other financial services with the recent launch of a metasearch engine for financial products in the Philippines.
Rommel Torres, GoBear Philippines country director, said they aim to help increase their users’ financial literacy by allowing them to compare financial products including insurance, credit cards, and loans right from their computers or mobile phones.
“People are usually forced to make decisions quicker when they are left with little or no options,” Torres said during GoBear’s media launch in Cebu on Thursday.
With GoBear, users are able to weigh their options in a transparent, quick, and understandable way.
Torres said financial services aren’t something most Filipinos had been interested in due to the misconception that these had entailed long processes and unnecessary expenses.
The Philippines has one of the lowest credit card penetration rates in the Southeast Asian region at only 3 to 4 percent.
“We don’t have to be afraid of credit cards or insurance because we need it,” he said.
For personal loans, users are able to see a breakdown of their loan including monthly payment, total payment, interest payments, and servicing costs, most of which aren’t presented when applying for a loan offline.
Users can search by reward types for credit cards, calculate annual rewards based on spending needs, and compare reward earnings versus other benefits, features and fees.
Torres also said that while GoBear is home to a number of financial products, the platform does not sell nor promote any particular product.
He said the company earns from Google Ads, which pays them a certain marketing fee for every link accessed on the GoBear site.
GoBear is Asia’s first and only platform of its kind, developed by its CEO and founder Andre Hesselink whose office is based in Singapore.
The platform was launched in Singapore March of last year and extended to Thailand in December.
It was then introduced to Malaysia in March this year and the Philippines, with a Manila launch last July.
Torres said they currently have 28 partner institutions including banks, insurance companies, and loan centers in the Philippines.
He said they target to bring this to 30 by the end of 2016.
GoBear presently has 2.5 million users in Asia, 220,000 of which are from the Philippines.
Torres said they target to reach out to 2.2 million users in the country by year-end.
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