Harmoney operates in a highly competitive market, that includes other online lending operations, personal finance providers as well as the major banks. It differentiates itself through personalised rates, a fast online application process, and exceptional customer service. They are also New Zealand's largest peer-to-peer lending platform.
Harmoney’s core business competency is its risk-based pricing, which relies on accurately predicting risk through its 100% online application. In leveraging this capability, they found the opportunity to build a prediction model based on the information given at the start of the application. This enables Harmoney to teach Google’s algorithm what an applicant with high intent and eligibility looks like, so it can learn how to show ads only to those people.
Harmoney uses AI Smart Bidding to forecast the likelihood of a user being approved before placing an advertisement in front of that user. They have become a world leader in AI powered media buying, as profiled by Google in a recent case study.
Harmoney also uses advanced multi-touch attribution models to correctly review the impact of its media placements, and to determine which creative message and advertising media is best suited to create the ideal “next best conversation” with the known and unknown applicant.
In the financial year ending March 2019 the volume of loans funded rose by 12% compared to FY2018. Gross margin for 40% of their customers doubled.
At the end 0f FY2019 Harmoney declared its first year of profit - $7.2 million. A large part of the company's growing financial success is the vision, reinforced by the results of our direct marketing campaigns, that marketing should be considered an investment in sales growth rather than an expense against the business.
As a consequence, with proven results, Harmoney were able to expand to broader search categories, and confidently increase their spend by 145% year on year.
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