E-Loan UK was established in November 1999 by eVentures (a 50:50 joint venture between epartners and Softbank), using branding and technology from US-based E-Loan. In September 2000, the UK company expanded its product range beyond mortgages and launched a specialist car finance service, completing circa £3.5 million in car finance transactions in less than two months without marketing the service.

Moneygator says it will consolidate the mortgage operations and re-launch the car finance service in April with an expanded range of lenders.

The service will offer products from a panel of financial institutions and integrate them with car pricing data and residual values of cars that are needed to provide the quotes for specialised car finance products such as personal contract plans. Moneygator says the service will include constantly updated new and used car prices and residual values depending on mileage; access to quotes from more than a dozen UK financial institutions; a variety of car finance options including unsecured loans, personal contract plans, deferred payment plans and hire purchase plans; plus a wide range of information and research on new and used cars.

Henning Holter, managing director of Moneygator, says: "The value and convenience of shopping around on an independent Web site and then completing an application online is very compelling to people, especially when supported by telephone support to answer any questions.

"Car finance is already a big part of our personal loans business and we believe this purchase will make us the leading independent loans originator in this high growth product category," he says.

He says the total potential market for origination of personal financial services in Europe is currently estimated to be up to £13.5 billion annually, of which £3.5 billion is attributable to the UK.