iMoney Group, South East Asia’s financial services comparison service, announced it has raised approximately RM13 million (about USD$4.0 million) from iSelect Limited, a leading Australia online comparison service.
Co-funders of iMoney Lee Ching Wei [L] and Bruno Araujo [R] after announcing the landmark deal that will further accelerate the company’s growthThe RM13 million in funds raised will mainly be used to further accelerate growth, bolster its management team as well as product and technology investment. A large portion of the new capital will also be reserved for investment into iMoney’s regional subsidiaries in Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines.
iMoney said it aims to triple its web traffic to 5.0 million unique visitors a month by next year across the South East Asia region. In the last 8 months of this year alone, iMoney claims it has already enjoyed a significant five-fold growth to approximately 1.5 million unique visitors a month.
Group CEO and co-founder, Lee Ching Wei added, “I’m personally delighted to be able to announce this deal and am looking forward to working closely with Damien and the team at iSelect to capture the vast growth potential of this marketplace. iSelect, as the leading online comparison service in Australia brings vast experience and knowledge to our business and we are excited to have such a strong partner on board.
“Moving forward, our business focus will be on rapidly expanding our web presence to broker more deals with financial institutions as well as to provide greater web content that is relevant to our consumers. Beyond continued organic growth, we are also evaluating a number of acquisition opportunities in the South East Asia Region with a view to growing even faster,” Lee added.
Executive Chairman of iSelect Limited, Damien Waller commented, “iMoney shares a similar business model to iSelect and is at a similar phase in its evolution to where iSelect was 10 years ago. iSelect’s investment in iMoney provides us with exposure to high growth consumer markets in South East Asia and an early stake in a market leading and high growth business.”
iSelect is Australia’s leading online comparison service, providing Australian consumers with product comparison and advice on more than 12,500 insurance, energy, personal finance and broadband products from over 85 partner providers. With a household brand that attracts over 7 million unique visitors to its website every year, iSelect now distributes 1 in 5 of all private health insurance policies in Australia. Owing to its digitally enabled and customer-centric advice model, iSelect continues to grow its market-leading position in health insurance, energy, life insurance and personal finance comparison.
iMoney Group currently generates approximately 1.5 million unique visitors a month, up 500% from January 2014. It claims to be the number one personal finance comparison service in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines (as measured by traffic via competitive intelligence tool, SimilarWeb PRO). Over the last year alone, iMoney has originated RM1.2 billion in home loans, 65,000 credit card and personal loan applications and now works with more than 50 financial institutions across 6 countries (Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and Hong Kong).