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The team from GoBear, together with Iskandar Ezzahuddin, Country Director of Malaysia, GoBear (third from left) and Andre Hesselink, CEO, GoBear (fourth from left).
GoBear is a new “metasearch” engine in town, launched just a few weeks ago in Malaysia on May 5th, 2016. It claims to offer the most comprehensive and unbiased comparison service for travel insurance and credit cards, while keeping the site easy to use by stripping the UI elements to its bare minimum. Though it only offers comparison for these two financial product categories, GoBear said it’ll be expanding to also compare car insurance policies and personal loans, in the third quarter of this year (Q3 2016). Here is the recorded live-stream of the launch on May 5th, presented by GoBear’s chief executive officer, Andre Hesselink:
To dive in a little deeper, we’ll first need to know out what exactly is a metasearch engine. Also known as an aggregator, a metasearch engine pulls search results from several search engines, to be presented together in a single place for the convenience of the user. Surprisingly, this idea works particularly well for financial products and services, because such service is lacking in this part of the world. If you were to Google “best credit card in Malaysia”, you’ll be inundated with advertisements in the first few lines, followed usually by blogs that offer their own reviews of top credit cards they personally prefer. You’ll also find other aggregators in the Google search result, but sometimes these aggregators only list the services but don’t offer any search features.
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Enter, GoBear. Think of it as the TripAdvisor for personal finance. The idea is this — each travel insurance site or bank already has its own search engine within to find the policy or card that suits you, but only within a single brand/company — and GoBear is able to grab the data of all the products from multiple brands to let you view them from a single place. It lets you fine-tune your requirements before hitting that search button, and will return with results tailored to you, which can be further filtered by providers and other criteria. For credit cards, you can sort by earnings to see which one has the best cashback, and for travel insurance policies, you can even sort by policy price to find the cheapest plan. If you can’t decide between a few options, GoBear has a ‘compare now’ button to let you pick up to four products for a side-by-side comparison.
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Iskandar Ezzahuddin, country director of GoBear Malaysia, said, “GoBear originated from the idea that people today want easy access to service information, and that customers should be able to compare various financial products easily before making a decision. This is where GoBear steps in, to provide a new experience that makes searching for financial products quickly, easily, and transparently. Today’s insurance buyers are mobile-first, multi-screen, and social media savvy. To reach them, insurance companies will need to employ an increasing emphasis on simplicity in search.”
There isn’t yet a mobile app made by GoBear, but its service isn’t something that you’ll use all the time, and its mobile site works well enough with the same features found in desktop view.
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GoBear promises its services to remain free and unbiased, due to its independent nature, as well as the fact that it’s not a broker. That means it neither sells nor charges its partners to push you a particular product. Instead, its business model relies on accurately comparing insurance plans and credit card deals across a number of providers, so when you click on a product you like, you’ll be redirected to the product page, and only then will GoBear get a “small marketing fee” from the provider that you’ve picked.
Andre Hesselink, chief executive officer of GoBear, commented on the expansion to Malaysia, “GoBear is a global brand in the making and we are very focused on being local to serve customers in each of our key markets in the best way. Together with a team of Malaysian specialists, we continue to enhance the seamless user experience, with search, filter, and insurance quotes.”
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At least in Malaysia, GoBear currently has 13 travel insurance and 20 credit card bank partners. The service in total lists over 1,000 financial products, with more to be added in the coming months. Even though only two categories are available now, comparison for car insurance policies and personal loans will be added in Q3 2016. In the near future, GoBear will also offer product comparison for health and home insurance.
Since it first established itself in Singapore and Thailand a year ago, GoBear has seen a 50 percent month-on-month growth in usage, with a recorded 1.2 million users. Now that GoBear has been launched in Malaysia and the Philippines, it is setting its sights on another three markets it will be launching in soon: Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Vietnam. GoBear’s ultimate goal is to be consumers’ “TripAdvisor for finance”; the first place you’ll think of when you want to get a new credit card or an insurance policy. It is an ambitious goal, but bear in mind that GoBear also takes user reviews of products, just like the aforementioned travel metasearch engine.
Besides taking GoBear for a spin, you can also visit its Facebook and Instagram pages for developments.
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