Grupo Caja Rural has 4,000 offices and eight million customers and provides a local service in every region of Spain through its regional banks.

The Febo solution provided to Caja Rural de Canarias is part of the Connect+ range of solutions developed by Experian Decision Analytics to offer a wide range of decision support services through a fully managed system.  It gives the bank the ability to process loan applications online in seconds and in real-time, enabling accurate risk assessment of each applicant and excellent customer service.  Ongoing monitoring enables the bank to understand its customers and continually improve its decisioning.

José Falcón, Operations Director of Caja Rural de Canarias, commented: “We needed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of loan processing within the bank without impact on our IT infrastructure. The managed service from Experian Decision Analytics has delivered a robust, low cost solution.  Not only do we get high quality of application processing and decisioning, but we have the expertise of the business and technical consultants of Experian Decision Analytics supporting our operation.”

Antonio Romero, Operational Center Director at Experian Decision Analytics, added: “Our Febo solution is an ideal option for organisations looking for a practical solution which can be implemented quickly and easily.  Caja Rural de Canarias is able to implement Febo within days with no need for investment in infrastructure or technical personnel.  The bank is fully supported by Experian Decision Analytics’s business and technical consultants to maintain and develop its business”.

Experian Decision Analytics has been operating in Spain since 1994 and is highly effective in developing decision support solutions. Experian Decision Analytics holds the Quality Certificate ISO 9001 in Quality Management System, that covers the development of systems and support solutions in credit risk decision making.
 

Prologia is particularly strong in the French mortgage sector. Created in 1984, Prologia has been part of the Air Liquide services group since 2000. Prologia will become part of Experian Decision Analytics, Experian's specialist decision support business, and will enable the company to enlarge its portfolio of risk management solutions.

"Decision solutions is a key activity of Experian and we continue to invest both in research and development as well as in acquisitions. Prologia brings us its expertise and knowledge of the property market, which is key to the banking and finance sectors. We will be better armed and positioned to answer their needs. This acquisition further emphasises our market-leading role in the decision support arena”, said Roger Aubrook, President of Experian Decision Analytics.

Anne-Françoise Douix, Managing Director of Prologia, added: “We are really proud of becoming part of Experian. The combination of our complementary product portfolios will strengthen both our companies, providing our clients with more advanced solutions, while giving Prologia immediate access to international markets for its solutions.”

The acquisition is consistent with Experian's global strategy of acquiring complementary businesses that provide new products, new data or entry into new vertical or regional markets, while leveraging the core assets of Experian.

A variety of pressures (market, legislative, competitive) are forcing change within the collections function, and the processes to collect debts are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Leading organisations are deploying advanced methods to ensure their collection department performs optimally, by understanding the objectives for the different stages of collections and adopting a strategic approach.

There are many benefits to taking this strategic approach, including:

-  Controlling and reducing costs through automation, streamlining of processes and   centralised control;
-   Increasing the return to order rate by focusing resource at the more challenging customers
-  Maximising revenue and increasing customer retention by offering improved customer service, rather than collections actions, for appropriate customers
-    Improving recovery rates by accelerating certain cases through to the late recoveries stage of the collections process

The aim is to enable a rapid reaction to changing customer needs and market demands as well as managing portfolio growth. Increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of the collections process results in a strategy that allows profitability to be optimised.

Experian Decision Analytics builds industry standard and custom collections models in markets all around the world, working closely with customers to develop solutions that are tailored to their specific business/market requirements. This experience has provided detailed insights into predicting collections behaviour from customer data, including the ways transaction patterns indicate the ability and desire of a customer to repay debts. Experian Decision Analytics has used its collections experience and expertise to combine advanced analytics with sophisticated tools for decision support and workflow management to create a complete collections package: COLLECT SM.

Collect SM provides a flexible and scalable solution that supports the complete collection process from pre-delinquency to late collections and write-off; it receives and processes collection cases, applying complex business rules and strategies to prioritise, makes appropriate collection decisions and identify the most effective actions. 

The sophisticated software application allows seeing the stages of collection process. At every phase of this process customers can be segmented on their unique profiles in order to apply relevant rules and scorecards.

Using this customer intelligence the most appropriate strategy and action to each collection case can be allocated. Collect SM enables organisations to improve efficiency and effectiveness, reducing both the costs associated with collecting debts and the credit losses written-off.

Bulgarian financial institutions offer a wide and diverse range of financial services and this strategy has led to unprecedented growth for this industry sector. In particular, 2005 has been a good year so far and shows little sign of slowing down. In the search for further growth, the financial services industry is turning its attention to the automotive sector, which itself is likely to break all records for car sales in 2005. Almost all the major vehicle producers are active in Bulgaria and expansion is continuing with new players constantly opening new retail outlets.

The new car market represents 15% of the total car market in Bulgaria and it is expected that 30,000 new  vehicles¹  will be sold this year. This represents a 51% increase on the previous year, which had already seen growth of 44%. The second-hand vehicles market is going through the same dynamic changes, clearly demonstrated by the increasing presence of the so-called ‘Auto-houses’ that now number over 120 in the capital alone.

Vehicle financing has certainly been driving this excitement and Bulgaria has seen a massive growth in ‘vehicle credit’ where leasing accounts for about 70% of all new-car sales². Nearly all the Bulgarian banks offer financing products for both the private and commercial sectors for new and second hand vehicle purchase. Additionally, captive finance schemes are available via the car manufacturers and a number of independent leasing companies have created partnerships with car dealers.

However, the rapid growth does not come without challenges.

Firstly, car dealers are not using the most efficient methods or technology for application processing and credit risk management.  Without these techniques, which are widespread in other markets, the growth in lending is matched by a corresponding rise in the level of bad debt.  Without accurate assessment of risk and a customer’s ability and willingness to repay, lenders are finding that many customers are struggling with their repayments and are consequently defaulting. Fraud, both at the point of application and through insurance fraud, is also an inevitable consequence of the growth in lending and can often be masked by ‘bad debt’ losses.  The issue of fraud is not widely recognised in Bulgaria and solutions to counter fraud are not currently being adopted by lenders, which could lead to major issues in the future.

Secondly, centrally held databases, like the newly created Experian Decision Analytics Credit Bureau of Bulgaria, that provides consumer profiles in areas such as ‘risk’, are not yet widely used. The only commonly accessed public data available comes from the Credit Register of the Bulgarian National Bank.  This information is limited and can only be accessed by banking institutions, which leaves a large number of the automotive lenders working blind.  Car dealers also face a lack of information on the vehicles, liens and transfer of ownership, which would enable them to easily monitor the car ownership transfer process.  Bulgarian law requires strict control of down payment registration along with police registration, lien registration and insurance.

The credit market is certainly booming in Bulgaria and, in particular, vehicle finance is seeing unprecedented growth that looks set to continue in the future.  To ensure sustainability and profitable growth, the credit financiers need now to adopt the new approaches and technology from across Europe that will help them to manage this expansion whilst limiting the emergence and losses of bad debt and fraud. 

1. Union of Importers of automobiles in Bulgaria – UIAB

2. National Statistics Institute

Authors: Yann Dautais & Dessislava Teneva - Experian Decision Analytics EAD, Bulgaria

The acquisition will enable the development of new international solutions for clients looking to gain customer insight and operational intelligence into their retail business performance.

Since it was founded in 1991, Solihull based FootFall Ltd has established customer counting as a key performance indicator, enabling retail property professionals to achieve maximum operational efficiency and assess performance on a continuous basis. It now operates internationally in eleven countries including Spain, Hong Kong, France and Germany, and across a number of markets including retail property, leisure, airports and financial services.

The Retail FootFall Index (RFI) is regarded as the industry standard benchmark for shopper visits. Endorsed by the British Council of Shopping Centres, it is used by a variety of parties, including the Bank of England, which uses the Retail FootFall Index as an indicator as part of the MPC discussions to determine interest rate movements. The FootFall index is now available in the UK, Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Switzerland and Hong Kong.

FootFall will form part of Experian’s Business Strategies division, which is already a leading provider of European retail property data, analysis and consultancy. Experian’s Business Strategies division provides comprehensive retail supply and demand solutions including local economic forecasts, information on retail provision and site availability, catchment profiles, local area expenditure, property market forecasts, rents data, planning proposals and new property deals. Its Goad retail supply database is the definitive source of retail property information in the UK and Ireland.

Charles Burton, Managing Director of Experian’s Business Strategies division, commented: “The acquisition of FootFall will enable Experian to offer a complete retail property solution, combining our analytical expertise with operational management information to strengthen our position further in both the property and retail sectors. In turn, FootFall can capitalise on our strengths throughout Europe and Asia to develop their pan-European and Asian  retail and property  offering.”

John Gallagher, Chief Executive and co-founder of FootFall Ltd, added: “The synergies between FootFall and Experian will allow us to offer our clients new products and add new data sets to our existing products, thus allowing clients greater knowledge about who their customers are and where potential customers are shopping. We are delighted to be part of Experian’s leading global offering.”
 

SECANA is Experian Decision Analytics’s first transaction fraud solution and complements our application fraud HUNTER solution.

With the acquisition of SECANA in Norway, Experian Decision Analytics now has a new transaction monitoring solution to prevent fraud, which is currently used by 85% of all card issuers in Norway. SECANA  is also present in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Austria. SECANA’s suite of products has saved card issuers over €80 million during the past five years.

Henning Gravklev, Managing Director, SECANA, said: “People may be surprised to learn that Norway is top of the European league for credit card use per capita, so it is an ideal market for developing anti-fraud solutions. Now by becoming part of Experian Decision Analytics, we can take the SECANA solutions to all kinds of new markets – so it is a very exciting time for us”.

SECANA’s fraud solutions are aimed at preventing credit and debit card transaction fraud. There are different modules and services available to help detect fraud throughout the credit card transaction process. These stages include “Card Protector” geared to the card issuers’ market; “Merchant Monitor” for the acquirers (retailers, banks etc) and Authorization Assistant, providing online real-time transaction monitoring interfacing directly with issuers and cardholders during the authorizations process.

The unique benefits of SECANA include:

·        Data accessibility: compared to competing products SECANA is able to retrieve large amounts of data in a flexible and fast way. As an example, the entire transactions history on a merchant or a card holder can be retrieved within a few seconds.

·        Speed: the speed of processing by SECANA depends on the hardware that is used by the operator; this means that the software is highly scalable. It has been dimensioned for the largest credit card issuers in the UK. For SECAN Authorisation Assistant system, the benchmark is to respond within 0.5 seconds.

·        Flexibility: the software design allows implementing modifications easily. As an example it is easy to set up new transactions streams into the system using SECANA’s mapping function. Another benefit is that is very easy to integrate SECANA with other applications and business processes; SECANA can import and export data to and from a DWH, a credit agency etc. Moreover, the flexibility of the software enables to deliver reports on all dimensions in the database, this feature is found in the Reporting module.

·        Entity Analysis: with this functionality two different logical data streams can be merged into one. For example, if a debit card is enabled for a proprietary scheme such as DANKORT (Denmark) or Switch (UK) the data streams may be analysed as one. So if the card is skimmed, the system will detect that transactions coming in from two countries simultaneously, even if one is carried by one of the big networks and the other by a more local debit scheme.

SECANA’s solutions have been approved by VISA international as an alternative to their own VISOR fraud solution. SECANA also is an alternative to MasterCard’s Aristeon system. In markets where there is a commercial credit card processor, SECANA can be implemented at the card processor to be offered as a shared service. In markets where there is no card processor, card issuers can install SECANA’s solutions within their own premises.
 

Banks Association of Turkey & Experian-Scorex to hold the "Collection Decisioning" seminar - Istanbul, 7 February

Debt management and collections is an issue that affects any organisation that receives payments from customers after providing credit or services. In particular, the growth in consumer credit has created a corresponding growth in indebtedness and levels of deliquency, a trend that is increasingly becoming an issue for lenders in many markets. Based on the importance of this issue, Experian Decision Analytics organised, in collaboration with the Banks Association of Turkey, a collection decisioning seminar in Istanbul on February 7th 2006 at the Ritz Carlton hotel.

Addressed to Credit Risk Directors and Chief Executive Officers from banking institutions operating in Turkey, this workshop highlighted the different strategies to be adopted in each phase of the collection process, from the pre-delinquency phase, proactive approach and strategic approach in early collection phase. The event focused on the way the collection issue can affect the Turkish financial sector and the program will elaborated on behavioural scorecard development processes used by the Experian Decision Analytics experts in collection phase management, as well as on Strategy design and implementation techniques. Latest reporting and monitoring techniques and an international case study completed the program.

For further information, please contact clementina.papagianni@experian-scorex.mc
 

Albanian Association of Banks & Experian Decision Analytics to hold  the "Practical Application of Scorecard Technology" seminar - Tirana, 22 February

Based on the issue of credit scoring, Experian Decision Analytics is going to held a scoring training seminar in collaboration with the Albanian Association of Banks on February 22nd 2006 at the Tirana International Hotel.

“The practical application of scorecard technology” workshop will introduce the basics of credit scoring, different types of scorecards, model development techniques, analysis methodologies, such as cut-off strategies and also scorecard monitoring. Through the course, the participants will explore the credit policy design and learn from discussions. The course will include case studies to demonstrate the practical use of the concepts. There will be many opportunities to ask questions during the workshop, breaks and after sessions.

The primary audience for this workshop are Banking Association members, Risk Managers, Marketing Managers, Operations Managers for Retail, Consumers and SMEs.

For further information and registration, please contact clementina.papagianni@experian-scorex.mc

 

UK Hunter User Group - Southport, 23 March

Every year, all UK Hunter users have an opportunity to share experiences and knowledge and to meet and mix with their peers in the market. The User Group is a unique event bringing together leading UK organisations and business leaders whose common goal is to minimise fraud in the rapidly changing environment.

Developing an understanding of the latest challenges and how these can be tackled is the key to developing a successful fraud prevention strategy. The User Group covers a mix of thought provoking speakers from across the fraud industry, client case studies and an update on the development of our anti-fraud solutions. The 2006 User Group is being held on the 16th March in Southport, UK.