Youngsters who want to take loans struggle to get them because they don’t have a track record of income generation and credit history. And, banks don’t lend because they find the risk of the ‘unknown’ forbidding.

What if the gap between the two can be bridged by tracking the behavioural aspects of youngsters to determine their risk profile?

That’s what Lenddo, a new credit scoring company, seeks to do — providing you a credit score (anywhere between one and 1,000).

This is based on non-traditional parameters — your online behaviour and the digital footprints that you leave all over. The higher you score, the lower the risk of default — and brighter your chance of securing a loan.

About 2.4 million youngsters have already benefited from this score. Started six years ago in the Philippines and now expanding rapidly in about 20 countries, including India, Lenddo helps lenders determine whether youngsters are a good risk for their first loan.

Lenddo grades you on the basis of your online behaviour — Facebook posts, tweets, the number of friends/likes you have on FB, the kind of interaction you have on the web, the purchases you make from e-commerce firms, your mobile phone usage and, for that matter, even the time you get up daily. Patterns are established and inferences are drawn from them. So, if you answered the phone quickly or responded to SMSes quickly, that may mark you out as responsive and responsible.

There are form filling analytics and psychometric tests too.

If, for instance, you hesitated at the point where you had to fill up your salary figures or filled it up with a wrong number and then again rubbed it — even that gets captured and could mark you out as a person with something to hide — and perhaps bring your overall score down.

Of course, all this is based on a ‘opt in’ clause — that is, all this will happen if you as a borrower permit them to use the data. Is it possible to game the system and fool the lender?

Don’t count on it, says Abhinav Haldia, Country Director, Lenddo, who laughs away any fears on that score.

He cites a staggering figure of 12,000 variables that are considered before scoring a person. So, there are enough clues strewn around to determine the kind of person or borrower you might turn out to be.

Lenddo is issuing about one lakh scores per month now in India, Abhinav says. Banks and NBFCs are beginning to show greater interest and with usage growing at a quick pace, he expects to touch the five lakh mark per month before the end of this fiscal.

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