InfoChoice remains in the red

While banks may be faring pretty well two years into the credit crunch providers of information services on banking may not be trading so well.

One of these, the ASX listed InfoChoice, yesterday reported that its underlying loss was greater in the June 2009 half year, at $450,000 before and after tax.

InfoChoice compiles comparative data on retail bank products which it publishes for free to the consumer market. It licences that data, and analytical tools used on websites, to banks and others.

An early provider in the segment back when the data was published via fax machines in the mid 1990s, plenty of others have chipped away the InfoChoice niche.

One newcomer, MoZo, has dislodged InfoChoice as the supplier of consumer finance data with Fairfax Digital, though InfoChoice still supplies the comparison tables published in Fairfax newspapers.

Plenty of micro sites that rework data supplied by Canstar and its offshoot RateCity are jostling for attention with consumers. Smaller and lower cost providers, such as Credit Card Finder are also proliferating.

Once Australia, a consumer financial services firm owned by Singapore's Yanlord group, owns more than 99 per cent of the shares in InfoChoice. The owners choose to maintain the ASX listing, and reporting requirements, presumably in order to roll other businesses into the listed entity in future.

Stephen Benton, chief executive of Once, this week played down market rumours of weak trading conditions for the firm which provide retail point of sale finance through the MyBuy brand, bill finance, life insurance and also mortgage origination through BidMyLoan.

Benton said recent redundancies, of which he said there were only seven, reflected the end of projects. He said the firm continued to invest, with 500 new retailers signed up to MyBuy and improvements to BidMyLoan and InfoChoice services.