Game’s on for Sovcombank credit scoring
Russia-based Sovcombank hopes to attract more young people looking to get their first credit card by “gamifying” the credit application process.
The project has been carried out with Entrepreneurial Finance Lab (EFL), which developed a new survey-based credit scoring model, and FICO, which handles marketing.
Fun and games for Sovcombank credit scoring
EFL uses psychometric scoring and behavioural data analysis technology.
“Unlike the FICO Score in Russia – which scores credit information from the National Bureau of Credit Histories (NBKI), Russia’s main credit bureau – the EFL Score gathers applicant-contributed data in an interactive online survey to assess a person’s attitudes toward credit and willingness to pay,” EFL explains.
Jim Wehmann, EVP of Scores at FICO, notes that even though “EFL uses a very different method from FICO, the goal is the same – to instantly and reliably determine a person’s likelihood of repaying credit”.
The EFL method is “an innovative way” for Sovcombank to grow its market share, says Sergey Khotimskiy, the bank’s deputy CEO. Sovcombank currently has two million clients and ranks 19th in Russia by total assets and 16th by net profit.
“We are using the EFL score to give young people a new way to get their first credit card,” Khotimskiy says.
“Moving forward, we intend to use the score to rate the risk of people who don’t have a FICO Score because they are new to credit, and so don’t have a credit history to score.”
