Five former executives at Virgin Money, including former head Rohan Gamble, have resurfaced in a new online financial services outfit called Mozo.

Mozo, short for Money Zone, allows consumers to compare financial products online, from credit cards to home loans, car loans, savings accounts and term deposits.

The site aims to challenge incumbents Infochoice and Cannex, both of which have long provided financial product comparison and ratings to consumers.

But what makes the site different is that it will tap into a new market demographic called ‘social researchers', those who like to base their investment decisions on feedback from existing customers. Mozo collaborated with research firm Roy Morgan to collate data from over 3,000 customers and these customer ratings are available on Mozo's website.

Mozo has also developed a free financial ‘health check' service that shows consumers whether they would benefit from switching their home loan, credit card or personal loan, and which products would save them the most, said the group's marketing director, Kirsty Lamont.

"Consumers simply enter their existing product details and Mozo instantly compares hundreds of products to generate a personalised report showing the Top 5 products that would save them the most money and help pay off their loan or credit card debt faster," she said.

Asked why the site was launched, Lamont said that none of the current financial services aggregators have, to date, succeeded in establishing sites that hits the mark with consumers, the way online sites for jobs, real estate, travel and cars have done.

"The online financial aggregator model has been attempted before in Australia but we don't believe the model has been right. We think there's space for a new model that offers users a more personalised experience, that's about more than just price comparison and that facilitates a dialogue between consumers and providers," said Lamont.

Comparison sites have become more popular as more people turn to the internet to do background research before buying. Over a third of UK consumers who research financial services online use a financial aggregator site to do so.

In 2006, some 8.7 million people bought a total 13.6 million financial products through a financial aggregator site.

Besides Gamble and Lamont, the other three ex-Virgin Money executive who started the company are Andrew Duncanson as head of product intelligence (formerly head of commercial at VM), Carole Donaghy as sales director (formerly head of cards at VM) and Chris Stephens as technology director (formerly VM head of technology).