Belgian Market Leader Immoweb Gets New Insurance Product and Sees Increased Mortgage Calculation Interest

Belgian real estate portal Immoweb has reported increased use of its mortgage simulator as it rolls out new ancillary products for home hunters.

The Axel Springer-owned portal which is run through the AVIV Group subsidiary reported 500,000 user simulations on its mortgage calculation tool over the last 12 months. According to Immoweb's Head of Financial Services Ronak Ahmadloo, the figure suggests that the portal's users are increasingly turning to it for their financial as well as real estate needs:

Ronak Ahmadloo
Head of Immoweb Financial Services

“The high level of interest in our mortgage loan tool reinforces our desire to expand our range of financial services. We already offer home insurance for tenants, whose number of contracts has increased by more than 125% in one year.” 

According to a press release circulated to journalists this morning, Immoweb is focussing on these new ancillary services and is debuting a new home insurance service being offered in partnership with Baloise Insurance as well as Belgian fintech company Qover which recently raised 20 million euros in growth capital.

Piet Derriks, Managing Director of Immoweb, explains:

“The real estate journey of a buyer or tenant does not stop when they have found their ideal home. For this reason, we have been supporting our visitors for two years now with the help of innovative and additional services. We always look at the core needs of our users and are always looking for interesting partnerships to take our services to a higher level time and again. For example, we recently entered into a partnership with the network of Immotheker Finotheker advisors to enable even more personalized guidance for mortgage loans. We will soon add their services to our online platform."

Immoweb is clearly goingdown a well trodden path. A growing number of market leading property vertical companies in mature markets have been getting into ancillary services around real estate transactions recently with some big money being spent on product development and M&A activity over the past 12 months, especially in the lucrative world of mortgages. REA Group, Quinto Andar and Zoopla have all invested heavily to buy mortgage related businesses recently.