The Creditinfo Chronicle
Creditinfo Lithuania – at TOP3 most advanced companies in Lithuania
Knowledge Economy Forum, Lithuanian think-tank for country’s progress, nominated Creditinfo Lithuania for „Knowledge economy company’s 2016” awards.
Interview with Paul Randall
Paul, why all those corporate changes and the fuss around the new Decision Analytics unit at Creditinfo?
Well, those are exciting times for the industry and for Creditinfo. Decision Analytics is right at the core of it all. The industry is changing and we are changing. The recent restructuring made our corporate structure more agile, empowering the international sales and consulting department (CIDA, as we are called right now) to bring Creditinfo sales to another level. This means that we are better prepared, better synchronized and are becoming much more aggressive in going to market as well as in dealing with our current customers and assisting them throughout their whole customer lifecycle.
To be more concrete, there are 2 main benefits that occurred after the change:
1) we are better synchronized to sell international products ourselves;
2) we can cooperate and use international synergies to better serve our local credit bureaus.
The second part is really critical for the Group. When Creditinfo is providing both decision solutions and credit bureau solutions to the same customer. Both parties will sell more of their products and we are less likely to lose either part to a competitor. I have seen this be a very effective strategy over the years working in many credit bureau. I believe that this is really important and will contribute in helping Creditinfo achieve its growth ambitions for 2020.
Most of the products sold by Decision Analytics unit today have been previously sold by Creditinfo Solutions. What products would become priority following the change, in your opinion?
The first thing I would say is that our aim is to provide solutions to our customer’s problems, for that we would normally provide a combination of a number of products.
CIDA products fall under 2 categories: the sale of credit bureau & related software and decision analytic, software & consulting products, which basically enable to turn raw data into intelligent information, such as our application processing engine for instance. I want to emphasize that we paint a bright future for our consultancy services, considering the complexity of our industry and the brilliant analytic resources we have to serve it. Yes, many of the products are created and delivered by Creditinfo Solutions, there may be other products delivered by other teams in the Group or possibly some third party solutions which are not in our repertoire at the moment.
What we envision to do, is to incorporate credit bureau data deep within an institution’s infrastructure, making of it an inseparable part of every single credit decision that is being made on the clients’ side. The more we integrate, the more barriers we build for potential competition to enter the market or for existing competitors to displace our credit bureau within a client. This is a long-term strategy to build strong relationships and gain customer loyalty. As far as priority products are concerned, well, everybody should be familiar with our CBS5 and the basic value added products that we provide, such being our monitoring or scoring service, as well as some of the newer ones: benchmarking, portfolio screening, batch processing, collateral registry service, collections system…
On the decision products our BEE decision engine, credit scores, behavioural scores, Application Processing Systems, consultancy are the core products but this is just the starting point. The key is maybe not the products by themselves, but the understanding of how we, at Decision Analytics can help our clients to cross-sell and up-sell. This is simply mandatory nowadays, but not self-evident. We need to support our customers on a daily basis, to make sure that we don’t miss opportunities and that we are the first contact they would use in case they’d have a question related to credit decisioning.
OK, so how do you go to market?
Changes are falling into place and despite the fact that we already have a strong and experienced team of consultants, analytics and sales people, we are about to grow and hire more region-specific staff, to be closer to our regional clients. We are about to have new, but experienced professionals to join us in Asia and Africa, as those are the positions that are being filled as we speak. We believe that more professional staff working closer to our international clients would help making a difference. So you will find DA staff or agents are already in Kenya, Monaco, Iceland, Singapore, Azerbaijan as well as Prague and this will continue to evolve with interviews recently in Cote d’Ivoire, Jamaica and Morocco.
How will these international CI DA experts cooperate with local offices? Will they compete or will they support? How will that work?
Creditinfo is one company and we will all be working and cooperating as a team, but with parallel objectives working in the same direction. In many of the cases it might end-up being integrated sales, which would result in a win-win situation and benefit both: the bureaus and CIDA. Let me give you an example: we were working with a major bank in Kenya on a very exciting project, consisting of implementing scoring and decision consultancy for mobile lending products. We sold our expertise via consultancy and credit scores, nevertheless, a very important part of that same sale and that solution was credit bureau data and credit bureau scores from our credit bureau in Kenya. It’s a fantastic case we hope to replicate as many times as we can.
Thank you Paul and all the best!
Cheers.
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe launching online exchange of information between banks via Creditinfo Credit Bureau Solution
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) announced on January 1st the official launch of the system for online exchange of information between banks via Creditinfo Credit Bureau Solution. The operation is live already.
Be Wrong and Be Right
There is a thing called the blame-game, where a problem develops into a bigger one via finger pointing, rather than a solution… I find the concept of blame uninteresting, in addition to being an obstacle to progress. We are all making mistakes all the time, the best only some of the time.
New law on credit bureaus comes into force in Azerbaijan
Big news for the economy of Azerbaijan: on 7 December 2016, the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan signed the Decree on implementation of the Law on Credit Bureaus, which will be the foundation of credit bureau operations in the country. Continue reading »
Keeping promises
The other day I made a comment about trying to help Haiti. It is not my way to talk about what I do as part of what I see as my duties as a human being. But since I mentioned it before, I wanted to provide an update. I contacted the World Bank about how to help. The idea came up of giving the country systems, normally valued at 2-3$ m., as part of building up of their financial infrastructure. We would also operate and maintain for free. This is now under consideration, with the Governor of the Central Bank of Haiti and others. Don’t expect further updates; just wanted to make sure that no one thought my words were just like those of the people we typically select to lead us, who talk big about such matters and do little.
Central Bank of Iraq to start online credit information exchange
On Tuesday, December 6th, the Central Bank of Iraq announced the launch of online exchange of information between the banks via a credit bureau system. The system, named CBS5, is provided by Creditinfo, who won an international tender initiated by WorldBank. The credit bureau system was built from scratch in only 10 months, including transfer of know how and financial institutions’ education and training in risk management. According to the Central Bank’s official press release, from now on this solution will enable a fast and reliable way to share credit information between government and private banking institutions. The implementation of a modern credit bureau system will contribute in increasing the efficiency of risk assessment in order to make sound credit decisions.
Interview: the President of the Azerbaijan Banks Association about the credit bureau in Azerbaijan
Zakir Nuriyev, the President of the Azerbaijan Banks Association, mentions the benefits of the establishment of a credit bureau in Azerbaijan in his interview for Banco.az. He states that along with banks and non-bank credit institutions, the credit bureau will process much more information on payment behavior than only information on loans. The credit bureau information will include individual, insurance, leasing, telecommunication as well as utility companies’ data, thus allowing to gather more information about borrowers, such as whether they actually pay phone bills, water or electricity invoices.
Continue reading »
Creditinfo Solutions is celebrating its 10th anniversary
Creditinfo Solutions is celebrating its 10th anniversary. A decade ago, on 1st December, 2006, we opened our doors, not knowing what was about to happen. Since then, we have grown from just a couple of employees to in excess of 100 employees. The company’s initial focus working with just local clients changed after a short period of time. Creditinfo Solutions, with the support and backing from our parent company, Creditinfo Group, soon began to successfully sign a number of sizeable deals to deliver credit bureau solutions in Sudan, Tanzania, Afghanistan, Iraq, Indonesia, Latvia and South Sudan. Now, our clientbase spans more than 40 countries around the world.
Coremetrix for financial inclusion
Financial Technology is often seen as a sector that works for those who are already winning: something to help sophisticated users of personal and commercial finance streamline their access. It performs that function, of course, and many of us have seen our professional and personal lives enriched as a result. But FinTech also has an essential role to play in opening access, as well as improving it.
At Coremetrix, we are committed to realising that potential. Part of the Creditinfo Group, we believe data on individuals – obtained voluntarily, and focusing on personality rather than the information used for traditional credit scoring – can broaden access to financial products of all kinds. Lenders and other financial institutions across international markets agree with us, and we are partnering with a number of them to provide access to credit and other services based on who people are, not what they can prove. Continue reading »
The largest provider of business information in Estonia – Krediidiinfo AS – changes name to Creditinfo Eesti AS
Starting today the largest provider of business information in Estonia – Krediidiinfo AS has been renamed to Creditinfo Eesti AS and will start using the corporate trademark Creditinfo. The change of name relates to the fact that at the beginning of this year 100% of company’s shares have been acquired by Creditinfo Group, the international credit information and credit risk management services provider.
Continue reading »
Benefits of a Credit Bureau in Azerbaijan outlined at the Banking Forum in Baku
The Banking Forum in Baku, Azerbaijan, organized by the Azerbaijan Banks Association, focused on the challenges and perspectives related to the development of the banking system in post-oil period and covered the benefits of opening a credit bureau in the country. This major industry event took place on the 24th and 25th of November, 2016.
Trade Credit Decision Making Webinar
Creditinfo Academy invites you to a “Trade Credit Decision Making” webinar. On February 9th 2017, 15:00 CET, Andryi Sichka, Managing Partner of Credit Engineering and Development Director of The Association of Credit for Central and Eastern Europe will share with you his insights on the topic.
