CONSUMERS who are uncertain about their credit profiles and how it may affect their prospects of getting loans from banks can now get an instant snapshot of their credit profile and viability, thanks to a link-up between DP Credit Bureau and Experian.
Listed on the London Stock Exchange, Experian specialises in providing information and analytical tools and marketing services to organisations and consumers to help manage the risk and reward of commercial and financial decisions. DP Credit Bureau is the consumer credit bureau unit of DP Information Group.
Experian is bringing to Singapore its Delphi consumer credit assessment tool in the form of the DP-Delphi program. According to Dennis Martin, Experian’s managing director for Asia-Pacific credit services, banks in the US and UK use the Delphi program to assess the credit viability of consumers before issuing loans.
By teaming up with Experian, DP Information aims to make it clearer to consumers what their credit standing is, and to allow banks to have a better risk assessment of consumers.
Key to it all is the DP-Delphi score, which will use aggregated data from member banks currently affiliated with the DP Group, public information on credit litigation that consumers may be involved in, and non-bank repayment data contributed by Singaporean businesses, cooperatives and retail stores to DP Information’s SME commercial credit bureau.
DP Information Group managing director Chen Yew Nah says that because the DP-Delphi score is based solely on Singapore data it is highly predictive of consumer behaviour here.
The chief service that DP aims to bring to the market with the DP-Delphi system is to allow consumers to have a more accurate understanding of their own credit-worthiness, independent of what banks know based on their own data.
Consumers wishing to understand their credit standing can get their DP-Delphi score as part of a personal credit bureau report they can purchase from DP Information.
As DP Information uses information from multiple sources that consumers would not ordinarily have access to, this snapshot of a consumer’s immediate credit rating can be very useful.
Under the system, a numerical value is given to the individual’s credit worthiness, with a higher score indicating better credit worthiness.
The other primary service that the system will bring is to allow banks to have more information about a consumer’s credit capability, so as to better ameliorate the risk of having non-performing loans.
The DP-Delphi score is currently only available to banks that currently are affiliated with DP Information, but Mr Martin says that he expects the DP-Delphi score to be used increasingly in line with the experience in the UK and the US.
Ms Chen says the chief advantage of the DP-Delphi score is that it is easy for individuals to understand their own credit standing and afford them greater options with banks when negotiating for loans or other financial aid. In these days of credit tightening every little bit helps.
Source : Business Times – 5 August 2009
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