All posts by Guest Contributor
In an effort to understand consumer needs better and help lenders educate their customers, VantageScore® Solutions surveyed more than 200 lenders nationwide on the topic of score reason codes.
Auto financing became easier to obtain in Q4 2013 and the market share for new vehicle loans in the nonprime, subprime and deep-subprime credit tiers increased slightly to 34.1 percent of all new loans, up from 32.8 percent in Q4 2012.
According to Experian Marketing Services' annual Email Market Study, personalized promotional emails have 29 percent higher unique open rates and 41 percent higher unique click rates than nonpersonalized mailings.
The most recent Experian State of the Automotive Finance Market report shows more consumers are leasing vehicles. Leases accounted for 28.4 percent of all new vehicles financed in Q4 2013 - the highest level on record since 2006.
While access to small-business credit is improving and credit balances are increasing, key differences still remain across the United States.
Using a risk model based on older data can result in reduced predictive power.
Findings from the most recent Experian State of the Automotive Finance Market report show outstanding automotive loan balances increased 11 percent from Q4 2012, reaching $798.5 billion in Q4 2013 — the highest level since 2007.
The housing market continues to recover, with mortgage originations increasing 12 percent year over year, moving from $508 billion to $570 billion.
Small-business credit conditions wrapped up the year by showing continued improvement for the fourth consecutive quarter.
By: Matt Sifferlen On January 17th, we celebrated the 308th birthday of one of America's most famous founding fathers, Ben Franklin. I've been a lifelong fan of his after reading his biography while in middle school, and each year when his birthday rolls around I'm inspired to research him a bit more since there is always something new to learn about his many meaningful contributions to this great nation. I find Ben a true inspiration for his capacity for knowledge, investigation, innovation, and of course for his many witty and memorable quotes. I think Ben would have been an exceptional blogger back in his day, raising the bar even higher for Seth Godin (one of my personal favorites) and other uber bloggers of today. And as a product manager, I highly respect Ben's lifelong devotion to improving society by finding practical solutions to complex problems. Upon a closer examination of many of Ben's quotes, I now feel that Ben was also a pioneer in providing useful lessons in commercial fraud prevention. Below is just a small sampling of what I mean. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” - Preventing commercial fraud before it happens is the key to saving your organization's profits and reputation from harmful damage. If you're focused on detecting fraud after the fact, you've already lost. “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” - Despite the high costs associated with commercial fraud losses, many organizations don't have a process in place to prevent it. This is primarily due to the fact that commercial fraud happens at a much lower frequency than consumer fraud. Are you one of those businesses that thinks "it'll never happen to me?" “When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water.” - So you didn't follow the advice of the first two quotes, and now you're feeling the pain and embarrassment that accompanies commercial fraud. Have you learned your lesson yet? “After crosses and losses, men grow humbler and wiser.” Ah, no lender likes losses. Nothing like a little scar tissue from "bad deals" related to fraud to remind you of decisions and processes that need to be improved in order to avoid history repeating itself. “Honesty is the best policy.” - Lots of businesses stumble on this part, failing to communicate when they've been compromised by fraud or failing to describe the true scope of the damage. Be honest (quickly!) and set expectations about what you're doing to limit the damage and prevent similar instances in the future. “Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.” - Being too late is a big concern when it comes to fraud prevention. It's impossible to prevent 100% of all fraud, but that shouldn't stop you from making sure that you have adequate preventive processes in place at your organization. “Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.” - Get a plan together now to deal with fraud scenarios that your business might be exposed to. Data breaches, online fraud and identity theft rates are higher than they've ever been. Shame on those businesses that aren't getting prepared now. “Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” - I highly doubt Ben actually said this, but some Internet sites attribute it to him. If you already follow all of his advice above, then maybe you can reward yourself with a nice pale ale of your choice! So Ben can not only be considered the "First American," but he can also be considered one of the first fraud prevention visionaries. Guess we'll need to add one more thing to his long list of accomplishments!
Delinquency rates for auto loans moved up slightly in the last quarter of 2013, with the 30 to 59 days past due (DPD), 60 to 89 DPD and 90 to 180 DPD delinquency rates at 2.18 percent, 0.56 percent and 0.24 percent, respectively.
The volume of emails sent by marketers rose nearly 13 percent during the 2013 holiday season compared to 2012.
Mobile devices continue to be a significant source of data breaches, and a particular concern for anyone engaged in cyber security.
By: Teri Tassara In my blog last month, I covered the importance of using quality credit attributes to gain greater accuracy in risk models. Credit attributes are also powerful in strengthening the decision process by providing granular views on consumers based on unique behavior characteristics. Effective uses include segmentation, overlay to scores and policy definition – across the entire customer lifecycle, from prospecting to collections and recovery. Overlay to scores – Credit attributes can be used to effectively segment generic scores to arrive at refined “Yes” or “No” decisions. In essence, this is customization without the added time and expense of custom model development. By overlaying attributes to scores, you can further segment the scored population to achieve appreciable lift over and above the use of a score alone. Segmentation – Once you made your “Yes” or “No” decision based on a specific score or within a score range, credit attributes can be used to tailor your final decision based on the “who”, “what” and “why”. For instance, you have two consumers with the same score. Credit attributes will tell you that Consumer A has a total credit limit of $25K and a BTL of 8%; Consumer B has a total credit limit of $15K, but a BTL of 25%. This insight will allow you to determine the best offer for each consumer. Policy definition - Policy rules can be applied first to get the desirable universe. For example, an auto lender may have a strict policy against giving credit to anyone with a repossession in the past, regardless of the consumer’s current risk score. High quality attributes can play a significant role in the overall decision making process, and its expansive usage across the customer lifecycle adds greater flexibility which translates to faster speed to market. In today’s dynamic market, credit attributes that are continuously aligned with market trends and purposed across various analytical are essential to delivering better decisions.
By: Maria Moynihan Crime prevention and awareness techniques are changing and data, analytics and use of technology is making a difference. While law enforcement departments continue to face issues related to data - ranging from working with outdated information, inability to share data across departments, and difficulty in collapsing data for analysis - a new trend is emerging where agencies are leveraging outside data sources and analytic expertise to better report on crimes, collapse information, predict patterns of behavior and ultimately locate criminals. One best practice being implemented by law enforcement agencies is to skip trace an individual much like a debt collector would. Techniques involve using historic address information and individual connections to better track to a person’s current location. See the full write up from CollectionsandCreditRisk.com to see how this works. Another great example of effective use of data in investigations can be seen in this video, where one Experian client, Intellaegis of El Dorado Hills, CA, recently worked with local law enforcement to follow the digital data footprints of a particular suspect, finding her in in just five minutes of searching. p> And, yet another representation of improved data gathering, handling and sharing of information for crime prevention and awareness can be found on a site I was just made aware of by one of my neighbors - www.crimemapping.com. Information is collapsed across departments for greater insight into the crimes that are happening within a neighborhood, offering a more comprehensive option for the general public to turn to on local area crime activity. Clearly, data, analytics and technology are making a positive impact to law enforcement processes and investigations. What is your public safety organization doing to evolve and better protect and serve the public?