MoneySavingExpert.com is a British consumer finance information and discussion website, founded by financial journalist Martin Lewis in February 2003. The website's focus is to provide people with information on saving money in the form of deals, tips and journalistic articles. In September 2012, it was bought by the

moneysupermarket.com Moneysupermarket.com Group PLC is a British price comparison website-based business specialising in financial services. The website enables consumers to compare prices on a range of products, including energy, car insurance, home insurance, t ...

group for a value of £87M. Since 2015, Lewis has taken on the role of executive chairman, overseeing 100 staff and editors reviewing and updating the site.

Petitions

The website has launched three petitions: *The first aimed to have the secured loan adverts banned from children's television which the site claims received 45,000 signatures. This campaign was the subject of a Parliamentary

early day motion In the Westminster parliamentary system, an early day motion (EDM) is a motion, expressed as a single sentence, tabled by members of Parliament that formally calls for debate "on an early day". In practice, they are rarely debated in the House ...

. * The second, launched in collaboration with the Consumer Credit Counselling Service and Credit Action, appealed to

Carol Vorderman Carol Jean Vorderman, HonFIET (born 24 December 1960) is a Welsh media personality, best known for appearing on the game show ''Countdown'' for 26 years from 1982 until 2008, as a newspaper columnist and nominal author of educational and diet ...

to stop appearing in secured loan advertising. This petition received over 80,000 signatures. * The third was in conjunction with the site's work on Bank Charges, and was placed on the UK Prime Minister's website, attracting over 70,000 signatures. Both of these campaigns have been the subject of Parliamentary

Campaigns

In August 2006 the site started to develop a system to check whether people were in the correct

council tax Council Tax is a local taxation system used in England, Scotland and Wales. It is a tax on domestic property, which was introduced in 1993 by the Local Government Finance Act 1992, replacing the short-lived Community Charge, which in turn re ...

band. Over a number of months an increasing number of people reported £1000s in backdated payouts. On 26 January 2007 Martin Lewis presented a ''

Tonight Tonight may refer to: Television * ''Tonight'' (1957 TV programme), a 1957–1965 British current events television programme hosted by Cliff Michelmore that was broadcast on BBC * ''Tonight'' (1975 TV programme), a 1975–1979 British current ...

'' programme on this following up the successes from the site; it rated 4.5 million viewers and saw the site covered in many national newspapers including the full front pages of the ''

Express Express or EXPRESS may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * '' Express: Aisle to Glory'', a 1998 comedy short film featuring Kal Penn * '' The Express: The Ernie Davis Story'', a 2008 film starring Dennis Quaid Music * ''Express'' ...

'' and '' Metro''. During late 2005, the issue of reclaiming unfair bank charges was highlighted and a few small websites started to highlight the issue. The site has been one of the main campaigning forces on this ever since. In November 2006 the original article was updated by a step-by-step guide, including template letters which speedily achieved its 1,000,000th download towards the end of February 2007. Other large-scale campaigns for the website include reclaiming council tax,

payment protection insurance Payment protection insurance (PPI), also known as credit insurance, credit protection insurance, or loan repayment insurance, is an insurance product that enables consumers to ensure repayment of credit if the borrower dies, becomes ill or disabl ...

, reclaiming mortgage exit fees and reclaiming credit card charges all of which have had over 100,000 people using template letter downloads. The site also provides support for saynoto0870.com, a website that provides geographical alternative telephone numbers to 0870 numbers and similar.

Charity contributions

MoneySavingExpert.com regularly contributes to charities nominated by site users. It is estimated that £100,000 was donated in the 2006-2007 year. In previous years all money has been given to nominated charities based on the percentage of the vote given by site users, but it has been announced that in the future a new registered charity, the ''MoneySavingExpert.com Charitable Fund'', will distribute the money. It has also been announced that a proportion of the money will fund a feasibility study into setting up a "MoneySaving Kids charity" to help educate children about how to be consumers. In December 2006 the book ''Thrifty Ways for Modern Days'' was launched by the site. The book was compiled from advice given on the threads of the MoneySaving Old Style section of the site. As the book was created from community knowledge and only edited by Martin Lewis, it was decided that all profits from the book would go to the MoneySavingExpert.com Charitable Fund.

Traffic

, the site has a global

Alexa Alexa may refer to: Technology *Amazon Alexa, a virtual assistant developed by Amazon * Alexa Internet, a defunct website ranking and traffic analysis service * Arri Alexa, a digital motion picture camera People * Alexa (name), a given name a ...

rank of 8,891 and a UK rank of 175.

Awards and support

*The site has been praised by a specific

Early Day Motion In the Westminster parliamentary system, an early day motion (EDM) is a motion, expressed as a single sentence, tabled by members of Parliament that formally calls for debate "on an early day". In practice, they are rarely debated in the House ...

in the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

*Winner of the New Media award at the Personal Finance Media Awards, November 2005 *''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...

'' newspaper wrote that the site has "a fearsome reputation for deconstructing the deals on offer from the banks and building societies to find out whether they are really good value" *''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' ( ...

'' listed the site as one of "ten that stun with sheer insight or inspired rich media".

References

External links

*{{Official website Financial services companies established in 2003 Economics websites Online financial services companies of the United Kingdom Personal finance Internet forums Finance in the United Kingdom