Top 10 Regional Bank Companies To Watch In Right Now

Top 10 Regional Bank Companies To Watch In Right Now: Bankrate Inc (RATE)

Bankrate, Inc. (Bankrate), incorporated on April 13, 2011, is a publisher, aggregator and distributor of personal finance content on the Internet. The Company provides consumers with personal finances editorial content across multiple vertical categories, including mortgages, deposits, insurance, credit cards, and other categories, such as retirement, automobile loans, and taxes. The Company provides financial applications and information to a network of distribution partners and through national and state publications. The Company develops and provides Web services to over 75 co-branded partners, including personal finance sites on the Internet such as Yahoo!, CNN Money, CNBC and Comcast. The Company licenses editorial content to over 100 newspapers on a daily basis, including including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Boston Globe. The Company offers services, including Mortgages and Home Lending, Deposits, Insurance, Credit Cards and Other financial products, including those related to retirement, tax, auto, and debt management.

The Company online publishing, is the sale of advertising, sponsorships, leads and hyperlinks, and lead generation within its Online Network through Bankrate.com, Interest.com, Bankaholic.com, Mortgage-calc.com, CreditCardGuide.com, Nationwidecardservices.com, Creditcardsearchengine.com, Feedisclosure.com, Insureme.com, Bankrate.com.cn (China), CreditCards.com, Creditcards.ca, Netquote.com, CD.com, CarInsuranceQuotes.com and InsWeb.com. The print publishing and licensing business is primarily engaged in the sale of advertising in the Mortgage Guide and CD & Deposit Guide.

Mortgages and Home Lending

The Company offers information on rates for different types of mortgages, home lending and refinancing options. The Companys rate information is specific to geographic location and contains nearly 600 loc! al markets, covering al l 50 United States. Consumers can customize searches for mor! tgage rates by loan size, maturity, and location through its online portals. The Company also provides original articles that cover topics, such as trends in housing markets and refinancing perspectives to help consumers with their decision making.

Deposits

The Company offers rate information on different deposit products, such as money market accounts, savings accounts and certificates of deposit. It also provides online analytic tools to help consumers calculate investment value using customized inputs.

Insurance

The Company facilitates a consumers ability to receive multiple competitive insurance quotes for auto, business, home, life, health and long-term care based on a single application. It also provides advice and detailed descriptions of insurance terms, aiding consumers in deciding amongst a range of policy options. Insurance quotes can be customized by age, marital status and location. In addition, the Company provides articles on topical subjects, such as recent healthcare reforms, as well as the basics to understanding an insurance policy.

Credit Cards

The Company offers a selection of consumer and business credit and prepaid cards for visitors. It provides detailed credit card information and comparison capabilities, and allows consumers to search for cards that cater to their specific needs. It displays cards by bank or issuer, credit quality, reward program, or card limit. The Company further hosts news and advice on credit card debt and bank policies, as well as tools to estimate credit score and credit card fees.

Other Personal Finance Products

The Company offers information on retirement, taxes, auto, and debt management. The content provided on such topics include 401(k), Social Security, tax deductions and exemptions, auto loans, debt consolidation, and credit risk.

The Company se! lls leads! to insurance agen ts, insurance carriers and credit card issuers. Its credit c! ard compa! rison marketplace is one of the third party online application sources for all issuers. The Company charges its advertisers on a per-lead basis based on the total number of leads generated for insurance products, and on a per-action basis for credit cards (upon approval or completion of an application). Advertisers that are listed in the Companys rate tables have the opportunity to hyperlink their listings. In addition, advertisers can buy hyperlinked placement within its qualified insurance listings. It sells its hyperlinks on a per-click pricing model. The Company provides a variety of digital display formats. Its common digital display advertisement sizes are leader boards and banners, which are prominently displayed at the top or bottom of a page, skyscrapers, islands and posters. The Company charges for these advertisements based on the number of times the advertisement is displayed or based on a fixed amount for a campaign.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Rich Smith]

  Getty Images You've all seen the bumper stickers -- maybe you even have one on your car -- "We're spending our kids' inheritance." But funny as the sticker is, and as much as you might share the sentiment on occasion, the truth is that most Americans of retirement age say they aren't doing anything of the sort. That's the upshot of a new survey from Bankrate.com (RATE) subsidiary Interest.com, which recently polled Americans ages 18 to 59, asking whether they expect to receive an inheritance from their elders at some point in their lifetimes. And then they polled the folks bearing the bumper stickers... and came to a pretty startling conclusion: Barely 1 in 4 Americans under the age of 60 have any hope of ever inheriting anything from anybody. But nearly 2 out of 3 Americans age 60 and over say that yes, indeed, they have been saving, and one of these days, their heirs are going to benefit. What We Have Here Is a Fai! lure to C! ommunicate A 2011 study conducted by the Boston College Center for Retirement Research estimated that U.S. retirees have built up an astounding $8.4 trillion dollars worth of inheritable wealth. Baby Boomers have benefited from giveaways to the tune of $2.4 trillion already, but this still leaves $6 trillion more waiting to be handed out. So on one hand, according to Interest.com, 64 percent of the folks with the dough say they expect to have enough money left over at the end of their lives to bequeath it to their heirs. Yet on the other hand, 27 percent of Americans who might inherit that money don't think they'll ever see any of it. Why not? The bumper stickers may be one reason. When enough people start joking about planning to spend what they've got on themselves -- especially in an economy like this one, when that may be their only option -- you can hardly blame the kids for beginning to believe them. Or perhaps the kids may not be expecting to receive an inheritance because they simply don't know there's any money to inherit.

• [By Rich Smith]

  Alamy You've probably heard by now that in some vague way, your credit rating has something to do with the premiums your auto insurance company charges you for coverage. But if you're like me, you've probably never quite understood the details of how this work. Fortunately, the good folks at InsuranceQuotes.com -- a subsidiary of Bankrate (RATE) -- recently published a report that draws back the curtain on this little-understood quirk of the insurance industry. Blame it on FICO Used to be, the rate you paid for insuring your car was tied primarily to demographic and personal factors that were clearly connected to the risk that you'd damage your car and ask the insurance company to pay for it: things like your age, sex, marital status, and driving history. It won't surprise anyone that younger, unmarried men are more likely to be risky drivers than soccer moms, and should therefore pay higher premiums. But about 20 years ago, the! folks at! Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO) found a correlation between low credit scores and a higher risk of filing an insurance claim. That's not causation, of course -- having bad credit doesn't somehow cause you to crash your car. But according to FICO, "people who choose to effectively manage their finances are also less likely to have future insurance losses." Conversely, there is a "statistical correlation between a person's credit score and the likelihood that he or she will file an auto insurance claim in the future." Suddenly, FICO had a new way to hawk its credit histories to insurance companies -- and insurance companies had a new excuse to raise your rates. News Flash: Everybody Does It Ever since, insurance companies have used this finding to tweak the rates they charge you for insurance. Today, says InsuranceQuotes, "about 97 percent of U.S. insurance companies" do it. But how do they do it, exactly?

• [By Rich Smith]

  Meridian Studios, Getty Images It's no great secret that across the nation, insurance premiums are on the rise. Over the past five years, the cost of insuring a home against fire and other casualty has crept up about 10 percent a year -- every year. Health insurance increases, while they've been muted of late, still rose 4 percent this year. But if you think those hikes are steep, get a load of this next one. Congratulations! You're a Father! (Now Open Your Wallet) Kids are expensive. If you're a parent, you know this already. If you're a parent of a kid who hasn't turned 16 just yet, you're on track to get another lesson in how expensive they can be. Because once your offspring passes the driver's test and receive a license to drive from the state, he's going to need to be insured -- and that will cost you an extra $2,000 a year, on average. (By the way, if your kid is getting driver's license, your wallet won't take quite as big a hit, girls being 25 percent less expensive to insure than boys on average. But it'll still be some serious coin.) Ac! cording t! o the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, driving is a risky activity for teens. The are more prone to get into accidents -- about four times as likely as older, more experienced drivers, according to the Centers for Disease Control. And traffic accidents are the leading causes of death for Americans ages 16 to 19. Between lives lost and property destroyed, this all makes insurance companies very wary of insuring teen drivers. And when they do agree to insure a teen, they make you pay through the nose. According to a recent report posted on Bankrate.com's (RATE) InsuranceQuotes.com, across both genders, all age categories, and all 50 states, parents pay an average 84 percent more for their car insurance after adding a teen to their policy. Stay Between the (State) Lines Think that's bad? It might get worse. Unless you're fortunate enough to live in a state like North Carolina or Hawaii,

source from Top Penny Stocks For 2015:http://www.seekpennystocks.com/top-10-regional-bank-companies-to-watch-in-right-now.html