As the mobile lending industry in Kenya continues to flourish, TransUnion recently introduced the TransUnion Mobile Score Card, which provides lenders with a customizable, reliable risk view of their mobile loans.
With the Score Card, TransUnion Kenya is helping more Kenyans to become active in the economy and its related financial services industries – pushing unscrupulous loan sharks out of the picture. In addition, TransUnion Kenya has seen a need to empower lenders with predictive, customizable risk views, and consumers with alternative access to credit as needed, as well as a means of building up a positive credit score by making use of mobile lending platforms. This mobile money ecosystem has outgrown necessity-based transactions and peer-to-peer lending and is now ready to dive head-first into the next phase – mobile credit and loans. Mobile loans already play an important part in the functioning of the economy and have an empowering effect on small trader businesses that would have previously been unable to access any form of credit.
“Today, Kenyans perform more transactions on mobile platforms than they do inside banks,” said Billy Owino, CEO of TransUnion Kenya. “Transacting with conventional banks can be difficult, as many banks require documentation such as payslips and credit history, in order to apply for credit or transactional accounts. The younger generation in Kenya is also not as willing to spend time queueing in banks for services, especially when they can simply turn to their mobile devices.”
The TransUnion Mobile Score Card is a database solution that continually ‘learns’ based on mobile transactional history, providing mobile lenders with a customisable, reliable risk view of their mobile loans. This solution will appeal to banks, SACCOs (Savings and Credit Cooperative Organisations), and mobile disruptors alike, as it delivers a much-needed consumer mobile loans risk management solution.
The Score Card provides on-demand risk profiling for faster and more profitable mobile credit decision making. Unlike other credit score solutions, it is able to predict repayment behaviours based on existing repayment data. Each new customer is an opportunity for growth, and the Score Card assists in identifying opportunities at the account management stage. This maximises sales and identifies upselling and cross-selling opportunities in the mobile segment.
“It’s clear that those financial players that are able to meet the needs of their customers on the platform of their choosing, by offering real-time loans based on accurate risk views, will be the ones that find the opportunity for increased growth in times of change,” said Owino.
