Little App’s new feature gives individuals and businesses instant, on-the-go access to their credit information
Nairobi, 18th June 2025 – Creditinfo, a global service provider for credit information and risk management solutions, has partnered with Little App, one of Africa’s most forward-thinking super apps, to enable Little App users to access their credit reports and monitor their credit scores instantly and securely within the app’s Financial Services section.
With the integration of Creditinfo’s credit bureau data into the app, individuals and businesses can conveniently view their credit information through their mobile devices. Whether applying for a loan, improving creditworthiness, or monitoring one’s financial health, this new feature makes it simple, fast, and user-friendly. Having this information available in one place will help people in Kenya to take control of their finances, make more informed decisions, and access credit with confidence.
“Our partnership with Little reflects more than just a shared goal; it’s a concrete step toward increasing financial inclusion and transparency across Kenya and the African region in the foreseeable future. Data is key to unlocking financial opportunity for people, and our priority is to make access to real-time, reliable credit information simpler and more intuitive. We’re immensely proud to deliver a solution that brings tangible benefits to people’s financial journeys,” said Kamau Kunyiha, Regional CEO East and Southern Africa at Creditinfo.
Kamal Budhabhatti, CEO at Little said: “Africa is undergoing a remarkable digital evolution, with mobile technology transforming how people live and engage with services. Through our collaboration with Creditinfo, we’ve built a solution that meets people where they are – on their phones – and fits seamlessly into their daily lives. We want to demystify complex financial data for everyone, empowering users to make informed decisions while driving lasting social and economic impact.”
-END-
About Creditinfo
Established in 1997 and headquartered in London, UK, Creditinfo is a provider of credit information and risk management solutions worldwide. As one of the fastest-growing companies in its field, Creditinfo facilitates access to finance, through intelligent information, software and decision analytics solutions.
With more than 30 credit bureaus running today, Creditinfo has the most considerable global presence in this field of credit risk management, with a significantly greater footprint than competitors. For decades it has provided business information, risk management and credit bureau solutions to some of the largest, lenders, governments and central banks globally to increase financial inclusion and generate economic growth by allowing credit access for SMEs and individuals.
Little App is a pan-African super app that has been transforming everyday experiences since 2016. With nearly a decade of innovation, Little offers a wide range of tech-driven solutions across mobility, payments, delivery, healthcare, and lifestyle services.
Operating in multiple African countries, Little serves both individual users and organizations—delivering convenience, affordability, and efficiency. From ride-hailing to enterprise transport solutions and digital wallets, Little is at the forefront of enabling digital and financial inclusion across the continent.
Reykjavik, Iceland – May 6th, 2025 – Lucinity, a global leader in AI-driven compliance software, has partnered with Creditinfo, a trusted and leading provider of credit and risk intelligence solutions, to integrate access to localized Know Your Customer (KYC) data from Creditinfo directly into Lucinity’s end-to-end compliance platform. This strategic partnership enables financial institutions to automate KYC checks—including PEP screening, watchlist monitoring, reliability assessments, and UBO insights—across onboarding, ongoing monitoring, and investigations, all within a single, intuitive interface.
Until now, many compliance teams have struggled with fragmented workflows when it comes to Know Your Customer (KYC) checks. They’ve had to rely on standalone systems, manually reconcile KYC data with their case investigations, and perform periodic re-checks without automation.
Lucinity and Creditinfo are solving these challenges by embedding high-quality, localized KYC data from Creditinfo—including PEP screening, watchlist monitoring, reliability assessments, and UBO information—into Lucinity’s holistic case management and transaction monitoring systems, powered by AI. Within Lucinity’s AI workflows, KYC data becomes an actionable input—automatically adjusting risk scores, triggering alerts, and adapting recommendations as new information becomes available.
Through the integration with Creditinfo’s API, financial institutions can automate checks during onboarding, schedule periodic refreshes, and run on-demand lookups for counterparties. Key KYC indicators—such as PEP status—are also flagged directly in Case Management and Customer 360, helping analysts make better-informed decisions without switching between systems.
Already offering real-time fraud detection through a partnership with Sift and real-time sanctions screening through Neterium and Facctum, Lucinity continues to build a network of integrations that simplify compliance while strengthening effectiveness. By consolidating tools that were previously siloed, Lucinity helps financial institutions cut costs, reduce context-switching, and focus on high-value investigations.
Guðmundur Kristjánsson, Founder and CEO of Lucinity, shared his perspective: “We kept hearing the same story from our customers — they had great separate financial crime tools, but none of them were connected with each other. This integration with CreditInfo brings the data and workflow together so compliance teams can focus on analysis, not data gathering.”
Creditinfo brings its strengths in reliable, frequently updated, and geographically relevant PEP data, with a special emphasis on regional accuracy in markets like Iceland with their proprietary Icelandic PEP database. This partnership reflects Creditinfo’s growing role as an essential data provider in the global compliance ecosystem. Hrefna Ösp Sigfinnsdóttir, CEO of Creditinfo in Iceland, commented, “We believe compliance shouldn’t be complicated. By partnering with Lucinity, we’re putting the right data exactly where it’s needed.”
About Lucinity
Lucinity is an AI software company for financial crime operations, designed to accelerate compliance teams. Lucinity enhances intelligence gathering, analysis, and decision-making, allowing institutions to streamline operations and reduce costs. As an open, configurable, no-code platform, Lucinity offers a seamless integration of data, automated workflows, and a modern user interface, making it a crucial tool for enhancing productivity and operational efficiency in the financial sector.
About Creditinfo
Creditinfo is a global provider of credit information and risk management services, helping financial institutions, businesses, and governments make data-driven decisions with confidence. Its proprietary PEP data service delivers accurate, regularly updated insights tailored to local markets.
Vilnius – 14th March, 2025: Creditinfo, a global service provider for credit information and risk management solutions, has announced the appointment of Jonas Lukošius as the new CEO of Creditinfo Lithuania. He will be responsible for shaping the business strategy, increasing operational efficiency, innovation and driving growth of Creditinfo Lithuania.
“Jonas Lukošius is an experienced manager with extensive experience in business transformation and performance improvement. His expertise will help us to strengthen our market position and further expand our credit risk management and analytics solutions services,” said Satrajit Saha, CEO of Creditinfo Group.
Mr. Lukošius joins Creditinfo Lithuania after more than 20 years of experience in leading various organizations. He has held the position of Managing Director at Žalgiris, as well as worked at TransUnion Baltics and DXC Technology, where he was responsible for strategic change, innovation and improving operational efficiency.
“I am honored to be the new CEO of Creditinfo Lithuania. Credit information and risk management solutions are critical to the business environment and I will strive to further strengthen the organization’s market position, promote innovation and enhance cooperation with clients,” said Mr Lukošius.
Mr Lukošius holds a Master’s degree in management from ISM University of Management and Economics and a Bachelor’s degree in Informatics from Vilnius University.
About Creditinfo:
Established in 1997 and headquartered in London, UK, Creditinfo is a provider of credit information and risk management solutions worldwide. As one of the fastest-growing companies in its field, Creditinfo facilitates access to finance, through intelligent information, software and decision analytics solutions.
Creditinfo actively cooperates with the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), is a member of the international associations ACCIS and BIIA, as well as of the Lithuanian Banking Association and the Investors Forum. Creditinfo has offices on four continents in more than 30 countries, including Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
There is a growing need to expand the information shared with Credit Reference Bureaus ( CRBs) to include trade data. Many manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers have reported cash flow challenges due to difficulties in recovering debts from their customers. This often results in their ability to restock or pay suppliers, further straining their operations. In Kenya, trade agreements frequently rely on informal arrangements, with limited legal recourse due to delays in the judicial systems. Could CRBs play a more significant role in addressing these issues?
As businesses increasingly rely on data to drive decision-making, it’s evident that CRBs, which currently hold financial data related primarily to bank and mobile loans, could greatly enhance their scope. While the inclusion of traditional credit data has boosted financial inclusion, expanding this to cover trade credit information especially from manufacturers, service providers, and wholesalers could revolutionise how businesses extend and manage credit.
If this trade data were collected and shared under a regulatory framework, it could enhance credit trading, improve business relationships, and further financial inclusion. Regular purchasing and payment data, when synthesized, could help businesses evaluate potential customers, set credit limits, and make informed decisions beyond traditional borrowing data.
Accounts receivable teams often struggle to recover overdue debts from customers extended credit without proper risk assessment. Introducing legislation to compel specific entities to share trade data based on factors like turnover or invoice value could help manage risk, reduce legal disputes, and cut down on costs associated with unpaid receivables.
Moreover, the Kenya Revenue Authority could benefit from improved tax collection, as greater financial discipline would be encouraged to avoid negative CRB listings, which can impact a company’s ability to do business. This would also help reduce the burden on the Judiciary, where countless civil cases related to unpaid debts remain unresolved, leading to significant business losses.
Properly managing and sharing trade credit information could streamline the business environment, improving cash flow and financial planning. Additionally, incorporating trade credit data into CRB decision making tools could help boost an individual’s or entity’s creditworthiness when seeking traditional loans. On an individual level, high value asset purchase, such as land and vehicles, could also be evaluated using shared credit sales and receipts data, providing both buyers and sellers with insights into the financial reliability of potential customers.
In conclusion, expanding the data shared with CRBs could significantly improve risk management, debtor control, and financial stability, creating a more transparent and efficient trading environment for businesses of all sizes.
Victoria– September 11, 2024 – The Central Bank of Seychelles (CBS) has today launched the Seychelles Credit Information System (SCIS) in accordance with the Credit Reporting Act, 2023, to improve credit information sharing across the financial system.
The SCIS will be administered by CBS, which will be responsible for overall supervision of the operation of the system, as well as providing awareness on the system and its governing law. The contract to develop and implement the SCIS was awarded to Creditinfo CEE a.s., a company based in the Czech Republic, through an open bidding method as per the CBS procurement process in April 2021.
The SCIS – which replaces the previous Credit Information System established under the Credit Reporting Regulations 2012 – is an improved credit information system which will enhance credit reporting and data exchange between participating institutions. It incorporates automated features requiring minimal manual processing, hence mitigating potential risks of inaccuracies in the credit information of customers.
The current participants of the SCIS include the commercial banks, Seychelles Credit Union, Development Bank of Seychelles and the Housing Finance Company (HFC). The SCIS will continue to expand with the addition of other participants through a phased approach, to include Government entities, utility companies, hire purchase and credit sales, financial leasing companies, and insurance companies. The addition of these other entities – that are also engaged in activities that provide for payment arrangements – will give a more accurate indication of the repayment history and level of indebtedness of customers, information which is essential in the decision-making process for granting credit and loan facilities.
To note that only participating institutions can access the credit information of an individual, at the consent of the individual, in compliance with the Credit Reporting Act, 2023. Individuals holding accounts with these institutions will also be able to access their own credit report through the Customer Credit Portal, which is expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2025.
Creditinfo has partnered with FinView, a global leader in credit information and risk management services, that developed an app that helps individuals and companies solve their debts, to revolutionise the financial solutions landscape through the launch of a new Digital Collections Service in Tanzania.
The launch of the Digital Collections Service in Tanzania, combines Creditinfo’s expertise in credit management and FinView’s ground-breaking digital collections solutions. Together, they aim to make debt recovery simpler using a user-friendly software that accelerates invoice settlement while decreasing manual effort.
The solution has revolutionised debt management for thousands of users in Europe and the United Kingdom. Through its user-friendly interface and effective tools, its software enables individuals and companies to take control of their financial commitments in a manageable and less stressful way. Through this partnership, Creditinfo will leverage the new technology to amplify and extend the services in Tanzania.
“Creditinfo and we are delighted to collaborate on expanding debt resolution expertise to a broader audience. This partnership goes beyond technology; it’s about making tangible differences in people’s lives. Our app has already transformed debt management for many. Now with their reach and resources, we aim to redefine financial collections in Tanzania and beyond.” said Darren Tebbitt CEO of FinView.
“We are incredibly proud of Creditinfo partnership with FinView. Not only does it mark an important milestone for us but it gives us the opportunity to benefit from FinView’s technology which will enable us to continue to provide innovative credit management solutions. Tanzania is an optimal market for us to introduce this service because of its tremendous promise for digital financial services. This partnership will set a new standard in debt collection and promote financial health and empowerment across Tanzania.” Said Edwin Urasa, CEO of CreditInfo Tanzania.
-ENDS-
About Creditinfo
Established in 1997 and headquartered in London, UK, Creditinfo is a provider of credit information and risk management solutions worldwide. As one of the fastest-growing companies in its field, Creditinfo facilitates access to finance, through intelligent information, software and decision analytics solutions.
With more than 30 credit bureaus running today, Creditinfo has the most considerable global presence in this field of credit risk management, with a significantly greater footprint than competitors. For decades it has provided business information, risk management and credit bureau solutions to some of the largest, lenders, governments and central banks globally to increase financial inclusion and generate economic growth by allowing credit access for SMEs and individuals.
Guðni Th. Jóhannesson, the President of Iceland, recently completed an official visit to Georgia, where he visited, among other things, the office of Creditinfo in Georgia.
The visit was intended to strengthen the relationship between Iceland and Georgia, among other things through increased cooperation in the field of climate issues and green solutions. The president was accompanied by Guðlaugur Þór Þórðarson, Minister of Environment, Energy and Climate, Nótt Thorberg, director of Grænvang, and a delegation of representatives from the business community, among whom was Hrefna Ösp Sigfinnsdóttir, managing director of Creditinfo in Iceland.
During the visit, Alexander Gomiashvili, Managing Director of Creditinfo in Georgia, welcomed the group and talked about Creditinfo’s activities in Georgia together with Hrefna Ösp, who educated those present about Creditinfo’s activities internationally.
Creditinfo Group has operations in over 30 countries around the world and over 400 employees.
Guðni Th. Jóhannesson, President of Iceland together with Alexander Gomiashvili, Managing Director of Creditinfo in GeorgiaAlexander Gomiashvili, Managing Director of Creditinfo in Georgia addresses the delegation of the President of Iceland.
West Africa Monetary Union Credit Bureau – Creditinfo West Africa
The single credit bureau (Creditinfo West Africa (Creditinfo)) that spans the single monetary union regulated by La Banque Centrale des États de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (BCEAO) has released evidence that the credit decisions of lenders is changing to be take into consideration the previous lending history of borrowers.
Creditinfo has been running the credit bureau for nearly ten years, initially much focus was to gather the correct information from Banks and Microfinance (MFI) lenders across the 8 countries of the union. Then followed the educational process of explaining how to understand and interpret the information so enabling improved risk decisions for granting credit.
The reporting is now showing real benefits; NPL (non-performing loan) rates where the credit bureau was not interrogated and no credit report was taken are seen as as much as four times higher than where a credit report was taken as part of the credit assessment.
This huge difference can be attributed to the fact that when lenders take a credit report from Creditinfo they adjust their decision when they see the information in the report. If a request for a loan comes from a customer who has poor payment performance with another lender, or they have a low credit score then that request for a loan may be declined, or at least the loan amount the institution is willing to lend will be reduced considerably. This information can only be known by the lenders that take a credit report as part of eth decision process.
More and more lenders across the region are systematically taking credit reports for all credit decisions, Creditinfo has seen the number of credit reports increasingly aligned to the number of credit decisions. However, there are still some lenders that have not systematically built in the automated process of system to system credit report requests, so even if it is the policy of the lender to always take a credit report they are dependent on individual underwriters to implement the policy. In this case the lender risks higher losses than their competitors. Automation and digitalisation also brings with it the opportunity to better use credit scoring and decision engines to drive further efficiencies and improve the customer experience.
Creditinfo West Africa is experiencing an increase in financial institutions going through a digital transformation in loan granting, linking to the credit bureau via an API, and then making the assessment with a decision engine, such as the hosted solution provided by Creditinfo.
There is also related benefits to this improvement in NPLs when credit reports are taken. With greater control of losses lenders will increase the number of loans granted, reduce the need for guarantors or collateral and broaden the access to credit. Furthermore, the lower risk environment will attract new lenders, or lenders to increase they range of credit products which increases competition.
With the ongoing aggression initiated by the Russian Federation in Ukraine, the need to implement international sanctions has to be embedded in the daily business activities of our companies.
We know that companies – operating in the fields of activity subject to such a special obligation – must do more due diligence to mitigate the risks associated with implementing sanctions, but the processes should be somewhat similar to all of the companies operating in Estonia.
Such companies, whose daily economic activities do not deal with continuous customer background research or transaction monitoring, can sometimes be in a difficult situation where they do not have enough know-how or manpower resources to assess the risk of whether one of their customers or partners falls under the established restrictions or not.
Finding such a necessary workforce is always possible, but as you know, making such a fixed cost can sometimes be impossible according to the company’s business model. In this case, one of the options is to delegate the control of said risks outside the company or to use convenient and straightforward, but at the same time reliable services to help with this task, which are available on the market.
For these cases, Creditinfo is offering small businesses the opportunity to mitigate their risks in two ways – by delegating the checking of compliance with sanction lists for their customers and partners entirely to us or by using a straightforward and convenient solution on our e-Krediidiinfo portal – WebScreening.
The web-based service WebScreening allows you to request the entry of a person of interest to you through a convenient and comprehensive user interface, both on international sanctions (European Union and the United Nations) and watch lists (so-called local sanctions and “black lists” of various countries, in some instances, for example, wanted persons) as well as persons with a national background ( PEP) from the lists.
With additional functions, it is possible to perform user management in the portal (if the company has more than one user) or view the archive of requests made. At this point, it is good to note that the archive of performed requests is convenient to use, for example, to check the performance of the employee’s duties and prove the requests made to the supervisory authority, if necessary.
In May 2023, Creditinfo Eesti announced a prize fund to recognize students who have addressed research questions in the fields of money laundering and sanctions in their research. In cooperation with the COBALT law firm and the representatives of the State Money Laundering Bureau, the evaluation committee chose Victoria Helenurme, a master’s student from the University of Tartu, as the winner for her master’s thesis on the topic “Prediction of deletion from the business register due to non-submission of the annual financial report using the example of Estonian companies”.
Victoria Helenurm is from Tallinn and graduated cum laude from the University of Tartu, majoring in Marketing & Financial Management. Today, she works as a financial controller in a company offering energy-saving indoor climate and renewable energy solutions and sees her future in business.
We had an interview with her on the journey of her thesis topic:
The topic of your thesis was “Prediction of deletion from the business register due to non-submission of the annual financial report using the example of Estonian companies” – how did you arrive at this topic?
At the beginning of the summer of 2022, discussions began with people who eventually became my thesis supervisors. My main desire was to write a paper on a current topic in society. This year, the Estonian state penalties for not submitting the annual report became harsher, and in cooperation with my supervisors, we saw that there is a public interest in this area of research and also sufficient data for research.
Why was this topic worth researching?
If, as a person, we take a loan, for example, we are understanding the obligations that come with taking a loan. For me, founding a company or being on its board is a somewhat similar responsibility – as a manager, we have assumed the responsibility, among other things, to report on the progress of our company’s business to the public.
Unfortunately, while we are mostly exemplary in servicing loans, tens of thousands of Estonian companies fail to submit their annual reports on time.
I cannot say whether this difference is due to, among other things, the fact that the penalties for not submitting the annual report have been relatively lenient. But it is certainly worthwhile for us to become more aware that such behavior is problematic.
After all the state of our countries businesses is based largely according to the data of the Business Register. If we have thousands of active companies that do not fulfill their reporting obligations, the financial forecasts, risk analyses, business decisions, etc. of the state, lenders and other parties will suffer in its quality.
The submission deadline (6 months after the end of the financial year) is a very lenient deadline. The business landscape is more and more unpredictable, so the knowledge of the previous year’s business results that arrives half a year later is already outdated. As is typical of our e-government, we would expect that at least certain types of companies could be assigned a much earlier submission obligation to help update our economic data.
What facts became clearer as part of the research?
In my research, I tried to find an answer to the question of whether the deregistration of a company can be predicted purely by looking at how the company’s management has cared about the obligation to submit an annual report in its previous business life.
The Estonian financial world is very much a believer in financial ratios when assessing the business health of a company. I tried to see if it is possible to convincingly assess the business risk of deleting the company by completely setting aside the financial statement.
The studied dataset also proved this – a significantly more accurate forecasting method than financial ratios (prediction accuracy approx. 63%) was the observation of the past behavior of board members (prediction accuracy almost 82%). It can be said that if there is a member of the board of the company who has either delayed or failed to submit the financial year report in previous companies, it is a very clear business risk, which indicates the risk of deletion of the company in question.
How could this research topic be continued?
Although I myself rather do not plan to continue my studies in a doctoral program, I definitely see possibilities for expanding this research topic. The obtained research results could certainly be compared with our neighboring countries – to assess whether in Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, etc. there are similar relationships between corporate delisting and board members’ past due diligence.
Another immediate opportunity for investigation is provided by the amendments to the law that entered into force this year, which toughened the penalties for failure to submit an annual report, among other things. Repeating this research in 5+ years would give an idea of whether business behavior has improved in terms of reporting obligations.
We were very pleased with Victoria’s research, as her research clearly connected with the general theme of our competition – the data of the Business Register and national registers in general are the main factors when applying the KYC principle. Financial data from the company that is not submitted on time or is completely missing, is a clear danger signal when investigating the background of your business partner.
When it comes to risk management – both when creating a customer relationship and during the existence of a customer relationship, up-to-date data from the business register is very necessary. Does the company actually operate; whether the data there (especially the field of activity and financial data) are correct (especially when it comes to the application of enhanced due diligence measures). The given data helps to understand the customer’s activity profile.
If the client does not submit annual reports, it is clear that it may be a riskier client, and this should be taken into account when establishing or monitoring a business relationship in order to mitigate the risk.
Urmas Pai – KYC&Fraud Global Product Manager, Head of the evaluation committee
