Canadian Fintech Affiliate: Insurance sites are the best exit strategy
What Nerdwallet, LendingTree and Quinstreet's earnings mean for Canada, Scotia will pay you $800 to switch accounts, and affiliates head to Bangkok🐘
Morning!
Welcome to the Canadian Fintech Affiliate newsletter, a monthly roundup of industry news, offer updates and conferences worth attending for Canadian affiliate marketers.
In today’s email:
Offer updates: Scotia will pay you $800 to switch, Amex updates Platinum rewards, Wealthsimple is giving away an iPhone and more
Insights: Insurance is a cash cow, consumer lending remains tight
Best conferences in Toronto, Vegas and Bangkok
Jobs: I launched a job board!
Opinions expressed are my own*
Today’s reading time is 5 minutes.
🤑 Offer updates
Scotiabank increased their cash bonus to $800 when you sign up for their Preferred Package chequing account. That’s enough to make me switch.
Neo Financial launched 2 new travel rewards credit cards Neo World Elite® Mastercard and the Neo World Mastercard®
Webull launched a 1.5% match on all deposits and transfers.
Amex has increased the welcome bonus to the American Express Platinum Card to 140,000 points. This comes after they’ve made changes to the majority of their card portfolio.
Wealthsimple is giving new users an iPhone or Mac when they deposit 100k+ within 30 days.
Insurance products surge when credit tightens
Nerdwallet, LendingTree and Quinstreet all reported earnings this month. These companies are among the largest financial affiliates in the US and offer great insights into shifting consumer demand, advertiser budgets and traffic trends.
Where they’re seeing growth
All three reported strong earnings in insurance-related products.
Nerdwallet reported $94.4 million in ‘Emerging Verticals’ led by revenue from insurance products, contributing to a 129% year-over-year increase.
LendingTree experienced a remarkable 210% revenue increase compared to the previous year, contributing $169.1 million to the total revenue.
Quinstreet announced record quarterly revenue of $279.2 million, marking a 125% year-over-year increase. This growth was primarily driven by a significant rise in auto insurance revenue, which surged by 664% compared to the previous year.
This surge suggests consumers are prioritizing insurance, and looking to compare and switch in order to save money as well as strong demand from advertisers to invest budgets into affiliate partnerships.
Where they’re experiencing pullback
Credit-related products such as credit cards and personal loans pulled back, with Nerdwallet revenue in these categories declining by 16% and 28%, respectively. Outside of traffic-related issues (read Google), Nerdwallet implies that their conversion rates decreased, suggesting lenders have taken a more cautious approach to underwriting.
LendingTree saw a modest increase of 5% in personal loans revenue though prefaced that the high interest rate environment is still hurting demand as interest rates remain high.
What this means for the Canadian market
With 2024 being the year of traffic challenges for all publishers, affiliates are looking for evergreen niches with consistent supply and demand.
When it comes to evergreen, there’s no better niche than insurance.
On top of the consistent demand for auto insurance, consumers are price conscious and actively looking for lower rates. With the affordability crisis raging, consumers are turning to publishers more than ever to find and compare quotes to save on their premiums.
This is a boon for top affiliates in the space like Ratehub.ca, Rates.ca and thinkinsure.ca.
With Google potentially deprioritizing ‘affiliate’ sites, these 3 companies have created a moat as they’re all insurance brokerages that can serve the end user instead of having their journey continue with an insurance partner.
Mychoice.ca (founded by former SEO at Rates.ca) has been making a push in the niche but it will take a lot of time (and money) to compete on the same level as the ‘Big 3’ in this vertical. With their quote engine live, they’re on the right track to build out the full customer journey.
Why build in an ultra competitive niche like insurance?
With the category being hyper competitive, the cost to build a site and rank for these keywords is among the most difficult financial niches.
When looking at an exit strategy, this is in my opinion the most likely to get acquired at the highest valuation.
Here’s a list of recent exits in Canada
Ratehub.ca → acquired by Novacap (est. $100 mill+)
Kanetix (Rates.ca) → acquired by OTPP (est. $100 mill+)
Surexdirect.com → acquired by iA Financial (est. $100 mill+)
Lowestrates.ca → acquired by Rates.ca (est. 10 mill+)
And looking at the US, there’s only one that needs mentioning
Assurance IQ → acquired by Prudential ($2.35 billion)
Closing thoughts
Lending is evergreen but ebbs and flows with interest rate cycles while insurance is consistent. In the current environment, insurance publishers that can maintain traffic momentum through the Google updates will be prime targets for an acquisition by a larger player looking to add scale through vertical integration.
But, it won’t be easy.
🍸Conferences
Upcoming conferences worth checking out:
Affiliate World Asia - December 4-5, 2024 | Bangkok, Thailand
My white whale, if you get a chance to check it out let me know how it is!
Affiliate Summit West - February 3 - 5, 2025 | Caesars Forum Las Vegas
If you looking at conferences in the US and not sure which to go to, ASW is a safe bet. There will be 5,000+ attendees from all verticals and panels covering all topics.
💼 Affiliate Marketing Jobs
With the industry reeling and many people looking for work, I launched a job board specifically for affiliate marketing roles in Canada.
There are currently 60+ roles listed.
Check it out 👉 https://affiliate-marketing-jobs.jobboardly.com/