Investit

You may be familiar with Fundit, the auction site where you specify the amount and type of loan you want and lenders bid for your business. Now the minds behind this have come up with Investit, which applies the same principles to investments.

The new Investit site is straightforward, easy to use and takes a lot of the tedious leg-work out of shopping around for the best place to put your money. Like Fundit, you set the terms - the amount you want to invest and the types of investments you want to find out rates for. Then it brings the providers to you, getting them to bid for your business with the best rates they can offer for your criteria.

Auctions take about two hours (perhaps a little longer outside of business hours) and when they're over, you aren't obliged to accept any bids. But if you do accept a bid, you can apply straightaway through the website. Some bids on Investit are shown as "offline rates" only - these rates can't be applied for on the site. To get them, you need to contact the provider directly.

Consumer New Zealand supports Investit because it:

• is free
• is independent
• brings consumers and financial institutions together without promoting any particular products or companies
• helps take the confusion out of term deposit investing with its simple process for keeping control in consumers' hands.

You can find additional tools and information on the site such as savings calculators, jargon busters, and investment guides.

To take a look for yourself.

Disclosure: Investit is funded by charging the participating financial institutions a small comission on each transaction. Consumer NZ provides links to Investit on its website. If a consumer.org.nz visitor makes an investment via Investit, Consumer NZ receives a refferal fee (a percentage of Investit's commission revenue) for each completed investment. We'll put it towards our research and testing programme.