FICO, a global leader in credit scoring, has announced a new partnership with Lenddo, a specialist in credit and verification technologies.

Together, the companies plan to develop a credit risk score for consumers in India who have limited or no formal credit history.

The collaboration will combine Lenddo’s dedicated knowledge in the use of non-traditional data for scoring and online verifications with FICO’s established strength in credit scores that are predictive, transparent and fair.

FICO and Lenddo are developing a score that will give lenders improved certainly around the risk assessment of people with “thin files” — those who don’t have enough data in their credit report to score.

Access to credit Richard Eldridge, Co-founder and Chief Executive of Lenddo, said: “We believe that helping qualified low- and middle-income consumers gain access to credit will improve their lives and quite possibly transform Indian society.”

Defeating the need of credit history to obtain a loan is essential to bring unserved but qualified consumers into the formal economy and giving them access to mainstream financial institutions, Eldridge said.

Jim Wehmann, EVP of Scores at FICO, said: “We see our partnership with Lenddo as a great synergy of analytics and scoring innovation, which we hope will give millions of creditworthy individuals access to credit.

“We already have received a very positive response in India from financial institutions, the regulators and government, and we look forward to announcing more very soon.”

srivats.kr@thehindu.co.in

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