According to the article featured in Economic times this week, your social media activities and digital transactions will soon determine your CIBIL score apart from the credit history.
The article reveals the announcement in the following words.
Credit Information Bureau (CIBIL), India's oldest and biggest credit information company, is in talks with the government to broaden the ambit of the Credit Information Act that will allow it to use alternative sources of data for deciding the credit worthiness of loan applicants.
The chief operating officer of CIBIL, Harshala Chandorkar, spoke to ET that they are in talks with the ministry of finance on widening the scope of the Credit Information Act.
It is also reported in the article that CIBIL is in process to launch a product that provide banks some information regarding lending to first-time borrowers. The product named`emerging consumer score' for such cases so that banks would have some reference points before lending.
It is obvious that social media know much more about you than you think and also guide the marketers about your taste and preferences, but it also a question that how much importance should be given to this data? It will be interesting to know more about the 'emerging consumer score' product from CIBIL and how a customer (potential borrower) can improve score from his/her profile on social media.
Personal finance is a data driven industry and everybody would agree the importance of data. Banks and NBFCs are willing to lend to first-time borrowers for whom credit information is not available with them. At the same time they need to have a verification mechanism to ensure security. In such case, the social media and online transaction history becomes an inevitable option for them.
If you take a closer look on your own social media activities and transactions, you will observe, so much information can be pulled out about you that is crucial for banks. You update information about your education, occupation status, company name, designation, location and much more. This information is a useful for Banks to verify KYC (Know Your Customers) document. Moreover your transaction history provides information about you purchases and credit card usages, which reveal your credit worthiness, a crucial factor to decide your CIBIL score.
In short, it is not just mobile, fashion or entertainment industry that keep watch on you through social media, but there are other players also. If different kind of e commerce and mobile wallet companies can use your transaction information to 'serve' you better, why can't CIBIL?
