As many lead providers feel the crunch, juggle increasing supply and shrinking demand, and rapid reduce their operations Bills.com is moving in a different direction–upwards!

Bills.com is No. 3 on the Hot 100, as selected by Entrepreneur Magazine, of the fastest growing companies in the Nation. Bills.com is posting some phenomenal growth rates:

With partner company Freedom Financial Network, LLC, Bills.com employed 320 employees at the end of 2007 in its San Mateo, Sacramento, and Tempe (Ariz.) offices. The company projects a total of 550 employees by the end of 2008, and 750 in 2009. The company has realized a compound annualized growth rate in sales over the past three years of 294 percent, growing by 173 percent in 2007, with revenues of $43.5 million.

Congratulations to Bills.com a fast company and a lead provider that has continually shown strong performance as a mortgage lead provider.

LeadPoint has raise another $6M in venture capital to continue to propel its rapid growth trajectory, despite the experience of many of its competitors:

The company claims that its marketplace platform has worked so well that it has gained market share and expanded across a number of industry verticals — even as competitors saw business drop off due to vertical advertisers like large mortgage companies collapsing earlier this year.

The reported growth number are certainly impressive considering the state of the largest part of its transactional business–mortgage:

Previously, in 2007, LeadPoint increased its number of sellers by 67 percent and its number of buyers by 90 percent although the company isn’t releasing specific traffic numbers.

Unquestionably, the top volume generating mortgage lead providers are: Nextag, LowerMyBills, and LendingTree. Here is a current measurement of traffic to each of their primary brand websites:

Interesting trends include an aggressive surge by Nextag:

Precipitous drop by LendingTree:

And a notable switch in leadership between LendingTree and LowerMyBills:

LeadPoint UK a top lead provider and lead marketplace in the UK, with a counterpart in the US (LeadPoint), announced today it is launching a UK payday loan lead offering from their marketplace.

Nick Chapman, managing director of LeadPoint UK, says: “Payday lending is the fastest growing UK consumer finance product. By launching into pay day loans we are taking another step to becoming the number one lead generator in the UK.”

LeadPoint UK offers a unique marketplace for lead buyer and lead sellers to trade on an open and transparent lead generation exchange.

8 out of 10 Americans are fearful of their identity being stolen according to a Bankrate.com national poll released today.  In addition, to there concerns over identity theft it seems that a growing percentage of Americans have actually experienced or know a victim of identity theft:

Bankrate.com released the findings of a national poll which found that 8 out of 10 Americans are concerned about their identity being stolen. Furthermore, over one-third (34%) of Americans know someone who has been a victim of identity theft.

The Bankrate.com poll is one of many upcoming initiatives and education resources Bankrate.com is providing in its ongoing 2008 Financial Literacy Series.

LendingTree announced today, to customers and lenders, that several former employees were suspected of sharing passwords with unauthorized lenders. This LendingTree security breach may have given these unauthorized lenders access to customer qualification forms.

LendingTree addressed their customers in a letter, with this information:

Recently, LendingTree learned that several former employees may have helped a handful of mortgage lenders gain access to LendingTree’s customer information by sharing confidential passwords with the lenders. When we learned of this situation, we quickly contacted the authorities, and LendingTree is helping with their investigation. We promptly made several system security changes. We also brought lawsuits against those involved.

Based on our investigation, we understand that these mortgage lenders used the passwords to access LendingTree’s customer loan request forms, normally available only to LendingTree-approved lenders, to market loans to those customers. The loan request forms contained data such as name, address, email address, telephone number, Social Security number, income and employment information. We believe these lenders accessed LendingTree’s loan request forms between October 2006 and early 2008.

LendingTree also provided a FAQ regarding the incident on their site.

Other, ongoing coverage:

• News Sources
• Blog Commentary

BusinessWeek reports Zillow’s latest initiative, which dips it’s toe into the mortgage leads market. This program give mortgage brokers a unique marketing channel of leads driven and controlled by the customer:

For mortgage companies, the anonymous leads come free of charge; they can make a bid based on information provided by the borrower, such as salary, assets, credit score, and the type of loan. Lenders can browse borrower requests and see competing quotes from other brokers before making a bid.

Although there is significant debate on the potential long-term success of the free leads and borrower control model used by Zillow, it is certainly an excellent opportunity to get familar with online mortgage leads and Internet borrowers at a very low risk.

Adchemy acquires two online mortgage originations veterans from Quicken Loans:

The company’s two new hires, Chris Meerschaert and Jon Moises will join a mortgage team with experience from companies such as LendingTree, GetSmart, Bankrate, and Low.com. Meerschaert spent 12 years at Quicken Loans in product marketing and business development. Moises’ experience spans six years at Quicken Loans focused on customer acquisition and several years at Borders.com in online marketing.

Adchemy differentiates their mortgage leads products with sophisticated algorithms to target, engage, and acquire high quality consumer inquiries:

“Any company can generate leads but the quality of these leads is often disappointing and cost prohibitive,” said Murthy Nukala, founder and chief executive officer of Adchemy. “We are the first company to use technology in an extensive and scalable way to target, engage and acquire customers for the mortgage industry. With our new micro-targeted offerings and strong additions to our team, we continue to deliver on our commiTMent of providing our mortgage customers with products that let them act on relevant high quality leads rather than sift through unqualified inquiries.”

Mortgage lenders are reporting that they are seeing the results:

“We have used several companies to generate leads for us in the mortgage space but none have been able to deliver the quality of leads we have seen from Adchemy Actions,” said George Woodrum, branch manager at Windsor Capital. “Instead of screening through thousands of useless leads, we now get the right leads that convert to funded loans at the right price.”

Adchemy also announced the launch of three new mortgage lead offerings targeting: FHA leads, VA leads, and Reverse Mortgage Leads.

Today Adchemy announced it has secured $19M is venture capital from Mayfield Fund, Hellman & Friedman, LLC, and existing investor August Capital.

Details of the transaction:

Adchemy, Inc. a next-generation online customer acquisition technology company, today announced it has secured $19 million in funding led by Mayfield Fund with additional investments from Hellman & Friedman, LLC., and existing investor August Capital. Founded in 2004, Adchemy develops software that is revolutionizing the world of online customer acquisition by combining advanced scientific algorithms with Web data to target, engage and qualify customers.

Comments from founder and CEO, Murthy Nukala:

“The market for online advertising is witnessing a gigantic shift today as consumers and marketers mine the potential of the Web,” said Murthy Nukala, founder and chief executive officer of Adchemy. “As the economics of online advertising move from a cost per impression or cost-per-click to a cost-per-action model, marketing departments transform from cost centers into revenue hubs. This is a profound shift and we are singularly focused on being a strategic partner to Chief Marketing Officers across all of their customer acquisition programs.”

Comment from Yogen Dalal, Managing Director of Mayfield Fund, the lead investor:

“We are active in the online advertising industry and had been tracking Adchemy for a while. They have strong relationships with their customers, and a solid reputation for being a highly innovative company with groundbreaking technology,” said Yogen Dalal, Mayfield managing director. “We believe the company has a talented founder and management team who have a unique vision of how their technology and algorithms will transform the online advertising landscape.”