• Fraud and Verification
• Consumer Marketing Data and Segmentation
• Customer Handling
• Collections & Recoveries
• Credit Risk and Affordability
• Database Solutions
• Digital Solutions
• Market Analysis and Network Planning
• Global Operations
• Multi-Bureau, Analytics and Metrics
  • Multi-bureau
  • Decision Bureau
  • Decision Strategy
  • Decision MI
• process benchmarking

Multi-bureau - are you getting the best out of your bureau data?

A choice of which credit bureau to use should be based upon a clear and unbiased assessment of the relevant merits of the data of each bureau.  This requires not only an extensive knowledge of the data, the way it is both held and retrieved, the value added products and the available summarised data blocks of all three credit bureaux but it also demands that the provider of such analytical services is completely independent of the bureaux.

DecisionMetrics is totally independent but works with all three bureaux on the basis that any bureau data it includes in a client's analytical solution is included purely on merit or at the client's request.

As DecisionMetrics considers that a multi-bureau strategy fundamentally adds value to any risk decisioning process, its strategy as a standard offering is to assess the effect of utilising more than one credit bureau across all of the analytical services it provides including scorecard developments, affordability assessment, customer indebtedness and Basel II capital adequacy assessment.

Why Multi-Bureau?

The UK has three consumer credit reference agencies, Callcredit, Equifax and Experian.  Whilst each has a different product set, the core information held by the bureaux is very similar and breaks down to the following categories:

• Electoral Roll - provided by local councils
• Public Data such as CCJs and Bankruptcies - provided by Registry Trust
• Shared Credit Account data - provided by lenders

Given that the source of Electoral Roll and Public data records is common across the three bureaux and the majority of lenders contribute to all three bureaux, the natural assumption would be that a credit search undertaken on each of the bureaux would produce identical results.  However, this is very far from being the case.

Whilst some of the differences can be explained by the small number of lenders that share data with only one credit bureau, the overwhelming discrepancies are because of the variation in loading, storing and retrieval mechanisms.  In effect, the data has been filed but on occasions it cannot be found again at the point it is required.  As all three bureaux suffer from this, it is not surprising that the credit report provided by any single credit bureau may not contain a complete account of an individual's credit record.

Quantifying the differences

Note:  figures derived from additional data identified by taking a second credit search.

In terms of indebtedness, a second search identified that the worst 5% indebted individuals had 23% higher unsecured monthly payments and 26% higher secured monthly payments than that identified from the first search.

Benefits

Other non tangible benefits in having the ability to search a second credit bureau are:

• Resilience - backup when primary bureau is unavailable
• More automated decisions
• Fairer decisions