ZPG Group Mid-Year Report 2022
3rd October 2022
ZPG’s companies include some of the UK’s most well recognised, trusted and innovative digital brands. These brands, including Zoopla, Uswitch, Money.co.uk and Confused.com, aim to empower consumers to make smarter property and household decisions.
Alongside these household names, ZPG is also one of the leading residential property software and data providers with a range of industry-leading products including Hometrack, Alto, Calcasa, Yourkeys and many others.
As the company surpasses the third anniversary of its transition to private ownership, ZPG continues to focus on its goal of providing significant value and an ever-improving experience to customers and consumers. This approach, led by its management team, is in turn supported by Silver Lake and Red Ventures, each of which provides unique expertise in product, technology, and marketing. This, combined with ZPG’s long-term strategic thinking, enables the company to make investments and other decisions that might not be possible in a public market context.
Key updates for the two divisions of ZPG (Property and RVU) over the first six months of the fiscal year ending June 2022 are outlined below.
Property
Zoopla
Zoopla has continued to deliver on its strategy to reimagine intelligent home decisions for all in H1 - with a focus on delivering solutions beyond search that digitise the property lifecycle, driving transparency and removing uncertainty for consumers when it comes to making decisions about property throughout the lifecycle of home ownership and occupation. For customers, our focus has been on helping them to drive efficiencies in their day-to-day operations. Key areas of delivery in H1 included:
Consumer Marketplace
Zoopla has continued its ambition to offer a differentiated experience for home research, making various onsite improvements to improve the ease and ability for consumers to find what they need faster. This includes reimagining the information architecture of the site and consolidating the navigation to just the 4 most important and visited areas for a home researching user, from a previous 47 options. This has been amplified through Zoopla’s latest marketing campaign.
Improvements were also made to My Home, bringing more intuitive property insights to users about their property and local area. From a search perspective, further improvements have been made to the filters, ensuring users are presented with only the properties that most accurately meet their criteria.
Estate Agency and New Homes Software
Alto has delivered a wide range of innovations including a new tenant document sharing feature, letter editing feature, webinar-style training for onboarding and an enhanced reporting system. Alto also launched a new data migration experience, which will unlock a significant time saving of 27hrs for Jupix customers who upgrade to Alto. The experience launched following an increase in Jupix customers who have decided to migrate to Alto.
In the New Homes market, Zoopla launched a proposition for smaller builders to enable them to access the full suite of Zoopla’s services in a curated, lower risk model. This is centred around the Yourkeys New Homes sales progression platform which we acquired in April 2021.
Banking, Risk & Analytics
Hometrack launched Digital Valuer, which is the next generation for automated valuation. It digitally assesses valuation and property risk to an even higher level than an AVM, while maintaining safe risk decisions. Digital Valuer reduces the reliance on physical valuations, bringing lenders cost and time benefits.
Calcasa launched the first Dutch hybrid valuation solution to market, meeting the regulatory requirement for a valuer to be involved and the strong demand for a risk-based valuation solution. The solution has seen strong pickup across the mortgage market in the Netherlands and has a wide range of benefits including a reduced cost for consumers and increased speed.
Corporate Responsibility
Annual targets have been defined for 2022 to ensure progress on Zoopla’s commitments to sustainability, community, and governance as well as an ESG strategy. The programme, as well as Zoopla’s multi-year partnership with the charity Crisis, launched in January to support Zoopla’s social mission - making change that leads people home.
Zoopla has also used its Lettings Advisory Board to call for meaningful reform in the rental sector, by engaging with Government on the Rental Reform Whitepaper. The Board, an independent, non-regulatory group, aims to draw on the deep industry expertise of leaders and influencers across the lettings sector.
Zoopla has also been working closely with the National Trading Standards to implement the Part A requirements that aim to improve material information on property listings and, as a result, improve transparency for consumers when it comes to buying or renting a home.
RVU
Continued successful acquisition programme
RVU continued to embed its April 2021 acquisition of Penguin Portals from Admiral Group plc, which included market leading comparison platforms Confused.com, Rastreator.com and LeLynx.fr. RVU is pursuing a strategy in the UK to leverage its market leading brands, Uswitch.com and Confused.com, and its industry expertise in insurance and utilities, to empower consumers to make confident financial decisions.
The business has made further investments to increase the depth of offer across other household services. Mojo Mortgages was acquired by RVU in December 2021. Mojo is a free online mortgage broker and delivers personalised mortgage recommendations through a hybrid of smart tech and human mortgage experts.
In March 2022, RVU agreed to acquire Tempcover. Tempcover leads the way for temporary insurance solutions with a strong reputation for exceptional user experience. It connects customers to short-term insurance policies, working with a panel of insurers and 85 corporate partners and brokers to bring flexible and affordable solutions to motorists. This transaction, completed in July 2022, gives RVU exposure to the growing temporary insurance segment of the general insurance market and offers further opportunities to surface the product across our consumer brands.
Market leadership and customer experience
RVU’s businesses continue to demonstrate leadership in their respective markets through developing market leading customer experiences.
Following regulatory changes in the general insurance market, Confused.com is developing tools to make it easier for customers to move insurance providers when a better value option is available.
Since the acquisition of Mojo Mortgages, RVU has made material improvements to customer journey and experience, giving increased confidence to further invest in growing the business.
RVU’s Uswitch.com business has continued to provide market leading guidance to customers in the energy market at a time of significant focus on energy bills. For example, its ‘U Stay Put’ press campaign in October 2021 advised customers to stay with their existing supplier at a period when switching energy was not possible. Despite minimal consumer switching activity in energy, Uswitch continues to see strong engagement with its energy guidance and tools, including sign-ups to its alerts services.
In Spain, RVU’s Rastreator business has moved the majority of its car insurance panel to an accurate pricing model, where consumers see actual policy prices at point of comparison rather than having to click-out to providers’ websites. This market first has allowed customers to make more informed decisions on which product to take than has been possible to date.
- Ends -
For further information, please contact PR Team on pr@zoopla.co.uk or +44 (0)20 3873 8770.
About Zoopla
Hello. We're Zoopla. A property website and app.
We know you're not just looking for a place to live. You're looking for a home.
Yeah, we've got over a million properties for you to browse.
Tools that let you filter them in all kinds of clever ways.
And reliable house price estimates, so you can be sure you aren't paying over the odds.
But we know you're looking for more than that.
Because that first flat won't just be a 'great investment opportunity'.
It'll be the feeling of starting out on your own.
That extra bedroom won't just mean another £20K on the re-sale price, it'll mean having your sister over to stay.
And that bungalow won't just be a way to release some equity, it will be a chance to spend more time with the grandkids.
We know that searching for a home is about more than just checking its price, location and features (important as all those things are).
What really matters is how it makes you feel.
We know what a home is really worth.
So let us help you find yours.
Zoopla is part of Zoopla Limited which was founded in 2007.
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