18(a) Describe the mission/purpose of your proposed gTLD

Prototypical answer:

The mission of .Loans is to represent the loan and mortgage industry and organizations involved in granting loans globally in its own differentiated namespace. Credit and Mortgage today make up a large Global Industry. The industry comprises of various participants including financial and mortgage institutions, loan brokers, loan agents and loan and mortgage correspondents.

There are an estimated 200,000 loan and mortgage related institutions and another 20k banks worldwide (refer our response to Q48 for the source of this information). These are some of the elements that make up the addressable market for .Loans.

More and more consumers are seeking information as well as making purchase decisions concerning loans and mortgages online further increasing the need for loan granting and related institutions to have an online presence that truly signifies what they do. As of March 2012, Google keyword tool data shows over 16million global searches contain the word ʺloanʺ every month.

With the exponential growth of the Internet we see business processes evolving and moving online. Banking services have been available online to consumers worldwide since a long time now and customers are quite accustomed to viewing their statements as well as transacting online. Trust in the Internet is tenuous. The Internet became the vast communication medium it is by unrestricted access. This unrestricted access has also come at a potentially unrestricted cost in fraud and theft. Consumers are frequently victims of phising attacks and other forms of internet abuse that result in financial losses and even worse threaten consumer trust in the online medium.

With the advent of the new Top Level Domain program, we have the opportunity, to develop more trustworthy systems, without imposing additional identification requirements on other generic TLDs. Many business sectors seek to build trust. The economic events of the past few years have caused financial institutions to build new forms of trust with their customer public.

Within the current gTLD and ccTLD environment, there are constant attempts of fraudulent representation of financial institutions on the Internet. Fraudulent “Nigerian Scam Emails” or “Chinese Funds Transfer emails” have occurred so often they have become common spam. Using the new gTLD program, it is possible to build a unique and trusted Internet space for loan and mortgage organizations and institutions. In this gTLD, all registrations will be fully restricted to organizations from the financial sector. The organization’s identity will have been verified prior to name resolution. The .Loans TLD will be a more trustworthy system.

.Loans will cater to the hundreds of 1000s of companies in the loan and mortgage business. A differentiated namespace that directly relates to the loans industry will provide a strong weapon in their arsenal to ensure they continue to thrive in these times of competition.

The mission⁄purpose for .Loans is to be the TLD of choice for loan and mortgage related businesses. Keeping this in mind, .Loans will look to contribute to the Internet Namespace in several ways:

1.1 ENHANCE TRUST

To create a “trusted and secure” namespace for the loan and mortgage industry and its users. The ..Loans extension is intended to provide a .registrants from the loans and mortgage industry, an immediately recognized domain name that tells Internet users that they are interacting with a legitimate organization. The ..Loans TLD will require registrants to achieve specific verification. This will create a TLD for which there is unprecedented accountability for web services launched on its domains. This will eliminate phishing and fraud resulting from mistaken identity creating a trusted and secure namespace and a trusted environment for Registrants

1.2 ENHANCE SEARCHABILITY AND RECOGNITION

To create a namespace that enables loan and mortgage businesses to easily distinguish themselves from countless others in unrestricted gTLDs. This benefits the Registrants as well as the end users. End users will be able to find the website of a business they are looking for easily amongst the sea of other sites.

1.3 ENHANCE REGISTRANT CHOICE

To create a namespace that provides loan and mortgage businesses greater choice to represent their brand online in the manner they please. Due to the saturation and unrestricted nature of the existing gTLD space many loan and mortgage businesses have to opt for a name that does not best reflect their brand. ..Loans will provide legitimate Registrants a higher guarantee of obtaining their desired name

1.4 CREATE A CLEANER INTERNET SPACE

To create a cleaner internet experience for end users by implementing pioneering registration policies, content and usage policies, and abuse mitigation processes.

1.5 CREATE A STABLE AND RESILIENT INTERNET SPACE

To deliver a stable and resilient internet experience to registrants and end-users by going above and beyond the ICANN mandated SLAs and delivering 100% resolution uptime

This completes our response to Q18(a)

Similar gTLD applications: (1)