BanxQuote
HOME KEY MONEY RATES ENTERPRISE BENCHMARKING SOLUTIONS BUSINESS DEBT RESTRUCTURING
ABOUT US

BanxQuote.com is a bank rate aggregator that provides personal finance and enterprise benchmarking solutions featuring dynamically updated daily market rates on banking, mortgage and loan products from financial institutions in all fifty states and Washington, DC.

The firm's BanxQuote Rx division offers financial restructuring services to private and public companies nationwide that are facing mounting debt obligations or cash flow problems, and may be unaware of their strategic options. The firm specializes in reducing and restructuring various categories of business debt, restoring or improving liquidity within the shortest possible time frame.

Overview & History

BanxQuote was established by its parent BanxCorp in 1984. It features side-by-side rates on money market accounts, savings and jumbo certificates of deposit (CDs), mortgage loans, home equity and auto loans for various terms and amounts.

BanxQuote also provides proprietary state-by-state, regional, and national composite benchmarks and indices for its various banking, mortgage and lending products. Clients of the firm have included hundreds of financial institutions nationwide and its indexes are frequently used as a trusted source and performance benchmark by public policymakers, government agencies, GSEs (Freddie Mac), pension funds, foundations, religious organizations, major banks and brands.

Evolution of the Banking Industry and Online Banking

Because of a historic national concern about concentration of power, the U.S. banking industry always had more independent banking institutions than most other countries. Regulatory intervention increased during the Great Depression, but the zeal for government oversight began eroding in the 1980s and 1990s, on the grounds that market discipline could achieve the same efficiency ends as regulation, without inhibiting innovation.

Consequently, Congress passed the Depository Institution Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980 which phased out Federal Reserve Regulation Q deposit interest rate ceilings, raised FDIC deposit insurance coverage to $100,000, authorized savings and loans to make consumer loans, pre-empted state usury laws limiting rates that lenders could charge on residential mortgage loans, and authorized state chartered banks to offer the same loan rates as national banks. The Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982 deregulated the Savings and Loan industry.

Moreover, during those two decades the banking industry changed from having extensive geographic limitations to being characterized by interstate banking and branching. As a result of the Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994, the deregulation of intrastate and interstate banking and branching activities played a major role in the changing structure of the U.S. banking industry.

Evolution of BanxQuote and the Bank Rate Market

In 1984, after the U.S. banking industry and interest rates were deregulated, and at about the same time as the British Bankers Association recognized the need to bring a measure of uniformity to the London Interbank market by introducing the fixing of BBA Interest Settlement rates, the predecessor of BBA LIBOR, BanxQuote began aggregating and publishing bank rate tables and indices for a series of banking, mortgage and loan products throughout the United States.

BanxQuote started compiling rates from financial institutions on a daily, weekly and monthly rotating schedule, inputting the rates into computers programmed to order, array, update and display the information. BanxQuote initially generated revenues by selling newsletter subscriptions, through paid access to a dial-up bulletin board system and by charging data licensing fees to print media, particularly The Wall Street Journal, which published BanxQuote rate tables on an ongoing basis for nearly two decades. BanxQuote also started publishing its rates on Reuters professional market terminals worldwide.

From 1986 until 1995 when it launched its Internet operations, BanxQuote also operated a national call-center in partnership with various fixed income securities broker-dealers, maintaining an active physical presence at the brokerage firms' trading floors.

The BanxQuote.com website was launched at a BanxQuote National Banking & Media Conference held at Salomon Brothers in New York, on April 7, 1995. The conference and multi-media event organized by BanxQuote featured a series of forward-thinking roundtable discussions moderated by senior executives and editors of Bloomberg, Business Week, Dow Jones Telerate, Fortune, Knight-Ridder Financial, Reuters and Worth, with the participation of several Ivy League universities, government officials and top financial industry executives from ADP, American Express, Chemical Bank, Citicorp, Dean Witter Discover, EDS, Ernst & Young, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, FDIC, Federal Reserve Board, Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, Intuit, KPMG, LaSalle National Bank, MBNA, Mellon Bank, M&T Bank, Oppenheimer & Co., PaineWebber, Prudential Bank, Republic National Bank, Safra National Bank, State Bank of India, and many others.

The Internet Changes the Landscape of the Bank Rate Market

Starting in the mid-1990s, the Internet emerged as an extremely powerful and popular medium, enabling a growing number of consumers to access financial information and execute banking and financial transactions online. By 2007, online banking became the most powerful retail banking channel ever deployed. According to the research firm TowerGroup, online banking is increasing in use at an annual rate of 27%, outpacing everything from ATMs to call centers. With ATMs and financial institution branches showing signs of flattening transaction volume, TowerGroup believes that the Internet presents the future of bank delivery.

Role of Bank Rate Aggregators

Bank rate aggregators such as BanxQuote provide greater efficiency and transparency to the market by reducing the time and effort required by in-market consumers across the country who would otherwise need to regularly call and check numerous banking and mortgage service centers and websites for interest rate quotes and updates, creating a centralized gateway for easy side-by-side review and comparison, as well as a centralized transaction facility.

Competition & Antitrust

In 2007, BanxCorp filed a federal antitrust complaint against its competitor Bankrate Inc. In particular, the complaint alleges that Bankrate has engaged in predatory pricing, vendor lock-in, exclusive dealing and other exclusionary product and distribution bundling and tie-in arrangements. These actions, according to the complaint, have suppressed competition by foreclosing principal distribution gateways available to competitors in the bank rate aggregation market.

Copyright © 2008 BanxCorp.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

CONTACT US
BanxQuote
199 Main Street
Suite 303
White Plains, NY 10601
Tel. 914.644.1800
Fax 914.644.1840
info@banx.com
BanxQuote Rx
590 Madison Avenue
21st Floor
New York, NY 10022
Tel. 212.499.9100
Fax 212.499.9180
rx@banx.com
BanxCorp

BANXQUOTE AT-A-GLANCE
Parent Co.
Type
Privately-Held
Founded
1984
Headquarters
White Plains, NY
Key People
Norbert Mehl
Founder & CEO
Industries

Banking
Financial Services
Information Technology

Products

PERSONAL FINANCE
BanxQuote Money Markets
BanxQuote CD Markets
BanxQuote Mortgage Markets
BanxQuote Home Equity
BanxQuote Auto Loans

ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS
BanxQuote Indexes & Analytics
BanxQuote Licensing

SMALL & MEDIUM BUSINESS
BanxQuote Rx
Debt Restructuring Solutions


Media Coverage & Syndication

Since its inception, BanxQuote has generated over 100 million average annual media and advertising impressions. It has been frequently quoted and syndicated by leading print and online media, such as the following:

  • Bloomberg
  • Business Week - Current Figures of the Week
  • The Wall Street Journal - BanxQuote Money Markets Table (1985-2002)
  • WSJ.com BanxQuote Banking Center (1995-2002)
  • The New York Times BanxQuote Banking Center (1996-2002)
  • The Washington Post BanxQuote Banking Center (1996-1999)
  • Business Week BanxQuote Banking Center (1997-1999)

BanxQuote has also received frequent press coverage by numerous other news organizations throughout the U.S., including the following:

Associated Press, CBS, U.S. News & World Report, USA Today, Forbes, Fortune, American Banker, Chicago Sun-Times, The Washington Post, Tribune Business News, Advance Publications, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, The Boston Globe, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Kansas City Star, St. Petersburg Times, Denver Rocky Mountain News, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Journal Record, The Record (Bergen County, NJ), Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, Oakland Tribune, The Salt Lake Tribune, El Diario/La Prensa, The Boston Herald, Los Angeles Business Journal, Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY), Portland Press, Herald (Maine), Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph and National Underwriter.