If you are not at least exploring behavioral analytics in credit decisioning, you are lagging, according to Ray Antunez, credit risk manager at U.S. Auto Credit Corp.
“What you start with is just going to be the information on the credit application, but you still need to at least make an effort to get out and find out what’s beneath the surface,” he told attendees at the Auto Finance Risk & Compliance Summit Tuesday. “Whether it’s personal data from utilities, payday lending, or how fast [customers] are switching through bank accounts, these are valid tradelines.”
The more lenders that track those tradelines today, the better understanding they will have of their customers’ behavior in the future, he added.
“Alternative data is getting better, and it’s proving more useful for us,” said Scott Schauer, Pelican Auto Finance’s chief operating officer and chief risk officer. “The reason we like it, for the space that we’re in, is the stability. We have very transient customers, so we look at things like telephone inquiries and bank account switches,” Schauer said.