An eBay for savings

When Zopa launched, many referred to them as a kind of eBay for loans. 

When Bidroute launched, it described itself as an eBay for trading even though they appear to be no longer trading themselves. 

Now there's another eBay in finance: Licuro.

Licuro is an eBay for savings, and is based on the highly successful Scandinavian MyBanker  system, which effectively allows people with money to place it onto their site where banks bid for having a slice of the action.

The way it works is that you register with Licuro and typically place £50,000 or more.  It can be used for lesser amounts, but they advise that you only save for less than three months if saving under £50,000.

Once you've registered, which costs £5.75 (free trials until September 1st) you place the amount, time and currency (mainly USD, GBP, EUR) you wish to offer.

The site also advises that if you do deposit USD, GBP, EUR, then you can benefit from highly-competitive time deposit rates offered by Scandinavian deposit takers.

Within 2 hours, financial firms who want that money place various interest rate bids against your funds. These competing bids come from banks and building societies registered by the Financial Services Authority (FSA).

For each bank offer received, "you can view the interest rate, the interest return, and information about which deposit taker has extended the offer. Furthermore, you can see how much time you have before the individual offers expire. You may then accept one or more of the offers", although you are under no obligation to accept any of the offers extended.

MyBanker has been running in Scandinavia since 2002 and really took off when access to capital became more difficult. Today, they claim to be processing more than £700 million per month.

Now then, who's gonna do that eBay for mortgages ...

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