The opportunity
The Mauritius Credit Information Bureau (MCIB) of the Bank of Mauritius only provides credit information such as outstanding loan balances, suit filed accounts, bankruptcy and insolvency cases and compromise settlements. They do not provide the information in a summarized way and, more importantly, they do not provide any indication to what extent the information can affect the creditworthiness of individuals. The proposed credit scoring platform will use all the credit and financial information to provide a meaningful score summarizing the credit worthiness of every individual. This will enable various institutions to profile prospective clients in a more effective way and to manage lending risks.
Non-Performing Assets (NPA) across banks are quite high in Mauritius averaging from 3% to 10%, and this is partly due to the lack of an effective tools for banks and to distinguish between good and bad borrowers, and to monitor the credit worthiness of existing customers over time. The credit scoring agency intends to fill in that gap.
Business objective
The main objective is to create an independent credit rating agency that provides a meaningful credit score and credit report for every Mauritian resident. Both the score and report will provide a more unified, detailed, and timely assessment on the debt status, loan payment behavior, and overall credit quality of every individual across the entire financial ecosystem. This is the first service of its kind in Mauritius and will have significant impact on the Mauritian economy.
Proprietary credit scores
The creditworthiness of a consumer is computed from a proprietary scoring model called a “credit score”, which we will develop using homegrown algorithms tailored specifically for the Mauritian market. It will more give more importance to factors that have led to poor financial behaviours of borrowers in the past.
A credit score is a number that reflects the likelihood of a customer paying credit back. We will leverage Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to continuously analyze data and patterns and keep an up-to-data predictive scoring model for each consumer with higher accuracy.
Industry-specific credit scores
Our Industry-specific credit scores incorporate the predictive power of the base credit score while also providing banks and other financial institutions a further-refined credit risk assessment tailored to the type of credit the consumer is seeking.
Because different lending uses (mortgage, automobile, credit card, shopping loans) have different parameters, our algorithms will be adjusted according to the predictability of that use. For this reason, financial institutions will have access to both an overall credit score for a consumer, as well as a number of specific credit scores based on the type of lending. For example, a person might have a different credit score for a credit card application when compared to a mortgage application.
Credit report
Our service will not only provide the credit score but will also provide a concise and easily understandable report summarizing various financial and non-financial information relating to the credit score. Below are some examples of information the report will contain.
Credit History
This will be a summary of a person's credit accounts and how he/she managed them. A credit history includes the times a person has borrowed money from a bank or another financial institution, for example; credit cards, loans, utilities, mobile phones, store cards and mortgages.
Payment Status
This will include details like whether a person has made repayments on time and in full. Missed or late payments stay on our credit report for at least six years, as do bankruptcies, individual voluntary arrangements and court judgments for non-payment of debts.
Financial Connections
This is a list of people who have a financial connection with that person, such as a joint mortgage or bank account. These people are known as the person’s financial associates. Their credit history doesn't appear in the person’s report, but banks and other financial institutions can view it when a person applies for credit. This is because a person’s financial associates' circumstances may affect his/her ability to repay money.
Our customers
Banks and other financial institutions will be able to query our platform in real time to retrieve a detailed credit report and up-to-date credit score of any Mauritian consumer, based on that person’s NIC number and personal information. They can then use the credit score and credit report, alongside other information provided by the client to get a better insight into that person’s financial behavior and be in a position to better evaluate the potential risk posed by lending money to that consumer and to reduce the amount of non-performing assets. Our credit scores will help bank and other financial institutions determine who qualifies for a loan, at what interest rate, and what credit limits.
