Samlino.dk Knows there’s Big Money in Price Comparison

Assuming you’re in need of a new insurance, credit card or a personal loan for example, would you know straight away where to find the most cost-efficient alternative for you? Price comparison is probably what you’ll want to do, but how and where to do that?

A 21st century grown up with a drop of determination will surely figure things out for him/herself, especially since rigorous inspection of the yellow pages and a telephone can easily be replaced with relevant search words on Google these days. However, even this marvelously more efficient means of discovery somehow feels a bit clumsy, and even more so, a bit narrow in regards to the variety of results.

Samlino.dk is the solution for all of the aforementioned troubles, that is, if you happen to be Danish. Where for Danes an all-sector price comparison platform like Samlino is quite the fresh alternative, for Brits its been around for a while already. MoneySuperMarket, which IPO’ed in 2007 with an initial market cap of £843m, is the British forefather to Samlino. Enabling consumers to compare prices on a range of products such as mortgages, credit cards and loans, the MoneySuperMarket platform has grown to gigantic proportions, clearly showing the need for comparison is in high demand, with their 2013 revenue of £225.6 million being living proof of that.

Rasmus Carlsen, Samlino.dk’s Managing Director, avoids little to acknowledge that MoneySuperMarket is much bigger and more established than its Danish counterpart Samlino, which has officially only been around for a little over a month. The reason for this, he says, is because the realistic competition will stem from Samlino’s target market which is homeground Denmark. There the markets have more room available, and even if not they’re not empty, Carlsen says the competing platforms, such as mybanker.dk, are service-specific and therefore not attractive enough.

“People want to go and compare prices for their insurance or loans, but they also like to do it all in one place. If one platform has all the products for comparison, that’s where they’ll return, because it’s easier to remember,” Carlsen says.

Carlsen knows what he’s talking about. For six years he worked in the sales and retention department for a major Danish insurance company, a time period during which he came face to face with the realisation that most people had no clue what the markets looked like and that finding the best prices was far from being anything obvious.

“Eventually, I quit my job and decided to found my own company. The idea of the business was to create a space where you’d get a lot of knowledge from, while also getting a good comparison of the whole market, regarding both price and benefits”, Carlsen says when recounting the birth of Samlino last January.

Today, Samlino is the broadest financial comparison covering platform in Denmark, including broadband and mobile, credit card, deposit account and unemployment funds, with car loans to be launched in the near future.

Samlino’s business model is mostly commission based, meaning a person that goes onto the platform looking for something specific, like a loan with low interest, will be directed by the platform to the providers page. If they complete the purchase of the product, Samlino gets a cut. Alternatively, they could also sell potential customer leads to call centres.

Moving on from how to where the money is made, Carlsen made it clear early on that Samlino’s target market would mainly be within Denmark. However, he did not exactly deny the possibility of a European expansion, though he underlined the need to conquer their home turf first. Once done, the hypothetical expansion would take place in countries without huge adversaries like MoneySuperMarket, suggesting perhaps Eastern Europe or the Baltic countries.

As for the financial side, Samlino has been privately funded for now. Dialogues with big investors concerning a seed round have already commenced, and then there’s also the company’s current revenue stream. Whatever waits for Samlino in the future, if their goal is to IPO for £800 million, it won’t happen just yet. But who knows.