There are a lot of reasons that the mortgage market is in a mess, but I think one clear influence was and continues to be a lack of customer knowledge.

As the mortgage refinance market feasted on historically low rates mortgage lenders (and investors) got increasingly exotic with loan products. Yet, customer education did not keep pace. The most basic concepts of creating and preserving financial health and stability are mysteries to many Americans. Layer on that the opportunity to get into a dream home with no money down, no income verification, interest only payments or maybe even less (and tack the excess onto a ballooning back-end) and you have a recipe for disaster.

Although the market has a wonderful tendency to, in its painful way, unravel our messes it is encouraging to see innovation in the market to help customers get a better understanding of their financial health.

Earlier this year, Mint.com launch a simple way to aggregate you personal finances, get a clearer picture of where you stand, and look for opportunities to save. Then Quicken Loans launched Quizzle.com to give customers a blended picture of how their mortgage and their finances work together for financial well-being.

Now there is another valuable offering, this time from a top lead provider–BillsIQ. I think this is a bold step for a company that gets paid to sell customer inquiries or leads, not educate consumers. Bills.com’s new tool leads customers through an extensive evaluation of their financial well being from credit to wealth:

I was impressed by the simple and easy to understand language in the questions. We often forget that customer do focus on financial services and use our jargon everyday. BillsIQ uses a much more conversational style to assess your financial IQ.

Having completed the IQ questionnaire I was surprised again by the customer focus of the tool. I fully expected to be slammed into a opt-in lead generation form at the end. But, I was pleasantly surprised when I was greeted with an enormous amount of helpful information, advice, and tips on how to improve my finances as well as very interesting benchmarks as to how I compare with other consumers like me. I had the opportunity to completely review specific actions I could take to improve each aspect of my IQ score. This process left me completely educated as to what I needed to do and how I might accomplish these new goals.

Only then did I have the option to see offers specifically tailored to my results. At this point in the process I felt very comfortable with where I was financially, what I need to do to get better, why these particular offers were appropriate to my situation, and was willing to move forward with one or more of the services–in an educated way.

Bills.com launches this tool today and I think it is a great example of a positive paradigm shift in putting customers first in our lead generation campaigns. It may not always produce the same volume (less of a priority in this market anyway), but there is no question that an educated customer closes easier, more frequently, and typically faster.

Take a look and see if you can improve your personal financial health.