Online loan sales intermediary: how a lender chooses a partner in Poland

How lenders sell loans online

In Poland a lender has four main online routes to the customer. They differ in acquisition cost, application quality and how much work remains on the lender’s side.

Financial comparison sites. Websites where the customer compares offers and clicks through to the chosen lender. They deliver high-intent traffic, because the customer is already looking for a loan. Limitation: the lender competes on one list with other offers, and the application only arrives after the click.

E-mail and SMS marketing. Campaigns to databases of people who have consented to financial offers. They build volume quickly and reach returning customers. Limitation: results depend on the quality of the database and consents, and GDPR obligations rest with the sender.

Affiliate network. Publishers (blogs, financial websites, niche comparison sites) promote the lender’s offer for a performance-based commission. It scales reach without an in-house marketing team. Limitation: traffic quality varies and must be controlled by the network.

Multi-lender application form, or pingtree. The customer fills in one application and the system routes it in real time to the lender whose criteria it meets. The lender pays for applications that passed its cut-offs, not for clicks. This is the channel where the intermediary does most of the work.

The best results come from combining channels with one partner: the comparison site and campaigns deliver traffic, and the pingtree turns it into applications matched to a specific offer.

The pingtree API (multi-lender application form): how it works

The pingtree API is Finelf.com’s core product, operated under the Funeda.pl brand. The flow looks like this:

1. One application. The customer reaches the form from a comparison site, an e-mail or SMS campaign or a publisher in the affiliate network, and fills it in once.
2. Prescoring and cut-offs. Before the application reaches any lender, the algorithm checks it against the criteria set by partners: age, income, amount, history. Low-quality applications drop out at this stage.
3. Real-time API calls. The application is routed to lenders in an order determined by fit and agreed terms. Each lender responds through the API: accept or decline.
4. Acceptance and redirect. The customer is handed over to the lender that accepted the application and completes the process in the lender’s system.
5. Settlement. The lender pays for applications that passed its criteria, according to the agreed model.

What the lender controls: its own cut-offs (who it wants to receive), volume (how many applications per day) and integration (one API instead of separate integrations with every traffic source). What the intermediary does: acquires traffic, filters, routes and reports.

Criteria for choosing an intermediary

Before you sign a contract, check six things. For each we added a question worth asking.

1. Application quality and prescoring. Does the intermediary filter applications before sending them, and can you set your own cut-offs? Question: “What share of the applications you send passes the first stage of scoring?”
2. Settlement model. Do you pay per click, per application, per accepted application or per loan granted? Question: “Which event do I pay for and how is it confirmed?”
3. Real-time API integration. Does the application reach you the moment it is submitted, and do you respond through an API? Question: “How long does integration take and do you provide a test environment?”
4. GDPR and user consent. Who is the data controller, what consents does the customer give and how are they documented? Question: “Show us the consent wording and how it is archived.”
5. Scale and volume stability. Does the intermediary own its traffic sources or only resell bought traffic? Own traffic means predictability. Question: “How many applications pass through your system each month and where do they come from?”
6. Transparent reporting. Can you see the source of every application and the results on your side? Question: “What does the daily report look like and what does it contain?”

Finelf.com as an online loan sales intermediary

Finelf.com is an online loan sales intermediary operating since 2017 on the Polish market. It combines its own traffic sources (the Czerwona-Skarbonka.pl comparison site, the Kontomierz.pl personal finance app, e-mail and SMS campaigns, a publisher network) with its own pingtree API under the Funeda.pl brand. Its own websites record around 700,000 visits a month. The company is a registered consumer credit intermediary (KNF Register of Credit Intermediaries, no. RPK038357) and a member of Fundacja Rozwoju Rynku Finansowego (FRRF). More: About Finelf.com.

One question decides the quality of an intermediary: where does the traffic come from. An intermediary that owns websites and databases controls quality at the source. An intermediary that buys traffic controls it only at the filtering stage.