LendingTree, Inc. is an online lending marketplace, founded in 1996 and headquartered in

Charlotte, North Carolina Charlotte ( ) is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the county seat of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 United ...

. The business platform allows potential

borrower A debtor or debitor is a legal entity (legal person) that owes a debt to another entity. The entity may be an individual, a firm, a government, a company or other legal person. The counterparty is called a creditor. When the counterpart of thi ...

s to connect with multiple loan operators to find optimal terms for

loan In finance, a loan is the tender of money by one party to another with an agreement to pay it back. The recipient, or borrower, incurs a debt and is usually required to pay interest for the use of the money. The document evidencing the deb ...

s, credit cards, deposit accounts, insurance, etc. LendingTree allows borrowers to shop and compare competitive rates and terms across an array of financial products. Other additional services include financing tools, comparative loan searches and borrowing information.

History

Founding

After graduating from

Bucknell University Bucknell University is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal-arts college in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1846 as the University at Lewisburg, it now consists of the College of Arts a ...

, Doug Lebda went to work for

PricewaterhouseCoopers PricewaterhouseCoopers, also known as PwC, is a multinational professional services network based in London, United Kingdom. It is the second-largest professional services network in the world and is one of the Big Four accounting firms, alon ...

in Pittsburgh as an auditor and consultant. During the process of purchasing his first home via a

mortgage A mortgage loan or simply mortgage (), in civil law (legal system), civil law jurisdictions known also as a hypothec loan, is a loan used either by purchasers of real property to raise funds to buy real estate, or by existing property owners t ...

, he found the process of comparing numerous resources time-consuming. Lebda sought a better way to improve this process in the marketplace. Lebda subsequently started CreditSource USA in late 1996; a year later the new company was rebranded as LendingTree. In 1998, LendingTree was launched online.

IAC ownership

LendingTree went through an

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...

(IPO) on February 15, 2000. In May 2003, LendingTree was acquired by

IAC/InterActiveCorp IAC Inc. is an American holding company that owns brands across 100 countries, mostly in media and Internet. The company originated in 1996 as HSN Inc. as the holding company of Home Shopping Network and USA Network before changing its name to ...

, former owner of

Ticketmaster Ticketmaster Entertainment, LLC is an American ticket sales and distribution company based in Beverly Hills, California, with operations in many countries around the world. In 2010, it merged with Live Nation under the name Live Nation Ente ...

Home Shopping Network HSN, Inc. an initialism of its former name Home Shopping Network, is an American free-to-air television network owned by the QVC Group (formerly Qurate Retail Group), which also owns Catalog merchant, catalog company Cornerstone Brands. It is ...

and Match.com. In 2004, LendingTree acquired HomeLoanCenter.com and formed LendingTree Loans. After five years, LendingTree spun off from IAC to join newly established Tree.com, Inc. Tree.com was the parent company of several brands and businesses in the financial services and real estate industries including LendingTree.com; GetSmart.com; DegreeTree.com; LendingTreeAutos.com; and DoneRight.com. In 2015, LendingTree disassembled the Tree.com umbrella to focus on its core brand, LendingTree, which incorporated business loans, personal loans, debt consolidation, free credit scores, and student loans along with its core mortgage products home loans, mortgage refinance, and home equity. Since 2019, LendingTree has served as the official name sponsor of the annual college football bowl played in

Mobile, Alabama Mobile ( , ) is a city and the county seat of Mobile County, Alabama, United States. The population was 187,041 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. After a successful vote to annex areas west of the city limits in July 2023, Mobil ...

, the

LendingTree Bowl The 68 Ventures Bowl is a postseason National Collegiate Athletic Association, NCAA-sanctioned Division I (NCAA)#Football Bowl Subdivision, Division I FBS college football bowl game that has been played annually in Mobile, Alabama since 1999. In ...

Acquisitions

In 2009, LendingTree acquired the personal financial management website Thrive. In August 2016, it acquired SimpleTuition, a company focused on student loans. Subsequent acquisitions include CompareCards (2016), DepositAccounts.com (2017), MagnifyMoney (2017), SnapCap (2017), Student Loan Hero (2018), QuoteWizard (2018), and ValuePenguin (2018).

2024 data breach

In 2024, the Lending Tree platform QuoteWizard suffered a data breach and extortion attempt as part of the 2024 Snowflake mass hacking campaign. The data stolen included information detailed customer information on QuoteWizard online customers which included, including personally identifiable information (PII) of nearly 50 million customers. The stolen data also included partial customer driver's license numbers, driving histories, risk profiles, and auto information such as auto make/model and VIN numbers

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lendingtree Companies listed on the Nasdaq American companies established in 1996 Financial services companies established in 1996 Companies based in Charlotte, North Carolina Online financial services companies of the United States Online marketplaces of the United States Internet properties established in 1996 2000 initial public offerings