Do many bankers or bureaucrats remember the fate of the Consumer Financial Information Service, a service funded by the Federal Government and offered by the Australian Consumers Association with data sourced from Cannex?
Not likely. This 1994 initiative, when Jeanette McHugh was Minister for Consumer Affairs in an earlier Labor government, quickly petered out.
Cannex went on to dominate the sector providing banking product comparison data; the ACA continued without such a service, and the government got little for its money.
Admittedly this effort at lowering the search cost for consumers of banking products was not much of a starter in the year before big business really started to pay attention to the internet. Bandwidth was still counted on fingers and toes at this time.
Fifteen years later, the Federal Government and the ACA are probing a similar business opportunity.
This time around, the ACA has worked out a commercial arrangement. MoZo, a firm run by former Virgin Money CEO Rohan Gamble, will feature product comparisons. Choice will thus source leads for MoZo, leading the consumer lobby down the financial services path.
"
Compare, Ditch and Switch" is Choice's slogan for its site, and one already receiving plugs from the Treasurer, Wayne Swan.
The Government's own recent efforts at cutting the cost of searching for product information are rather narrower: someone at ASIC has devised a calculator that can be found at the commission's Fido website for consumers.
The Australian Securities and Investment Commission's version shows how long someone can expect to wait to recover switching costs, if at all; and how much sooner the loan will be repaid.
The ASIC calculator provides a service similar to those marketed by Canstar (as Cannex is now known), InfoChoice, GBST and possibly others.