Access To Credit Bureau Information For Fintechs

This post analyses the implications of RBI allowing unregulated entities to access credit bureau data. It explains the history of data sharing between regulated entities and fintech players. And highlights the benefits and risks of providing fintech players access to credit bureau data.

Digital lending is a data play. The better a lender knows its borrowers, the more likely it is to get its money back. Which is why digital lending platforms use multiple data sets, like social media activity, e-commerce purchases, internet usage patterns etc. to underwrite borrowers. They have developed sophisticated underwriting tools (based on alternative data sets) to determine a borrower's creditworthiness. But, till now, they couldn't access more traditional data points like a borrower's credit score. This is set to change.