THE long-awaited, government-funded fi nancial information serviceMoneyCHOICE$ should be ready for a public launch in December or January.
MoneyCHOICE$ is a joint venture between the Australian Consumers’ Association,the publishers of Choice magazine, and the interest rate monitor group Cannex.The team won a tender in December last year to provide an independent,interactive, fi nancial product advisory service.
The project’s technical development manager, Mr Norm Crothers, said in-housetrials of the program would begin in coming weeks.
“Because the charge for the service will be in dollars per minute, we will be testingthe average time people spend on the line so we know how to price the service,” hesaid.
“There will be a bit of debugging as well, but the main point is to keep the chargesreasonable but not to lose money on it.”
Cannex, which already offers an independent interest rate monitor service, willprovide the raw data for the service.
The service will provide comparisons between different products, taking intoaccount individual situations.