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July 23, 2024
RiskSeal’s Alternative Data Sources for Credit Scoring
Discover how RiskSeal's digital scoring system uses alternative data sources to generate comprehensive credit profiles for potential borrowers.
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Discover how RiskSeal's digital scoring system uses alternative data sources to generate comprehensive credit profiles for potential borrowers.
Imagine this: a potential borrower approaches your lending organization, but there's no information about them in the credit bureau. Without knowing their creditworthiness, you can't approve the loan.
Enter the RiskSeal digital scoring system. Provide us with the borrower's data, and in five seconds, you'll receive a detailed profile with 300+ insights and a credit report, including their financial behavior and digital credit score. This information is sufficient to make an informed lending decision.
In this article, we'll explain the alternative data sources for credit scoring used by RiskSeal.
According to The Radicati Group, there are about 4.5 billion active email users worldwide. This number is expected to grow every year.
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This means that an email account lookup can give a lender access to information about 55% of the world's population.
Email lookup is the process of verifying the identity of potential borrowers based on their email address.
A single check can provide data that can determine if a particular email account belongs to a fraudster.
At RiskSeal, a single API call provides the lender with this information, including:
RiskSeal digital scoring system offers an innovative email lookup solution for fintech providers.
We analyze over 140 social media and online platforms and return a large data set to our clients.
These include:
Data about the email owner. These include name, associated phone numbers and additional email addresses.
Online accounts registered to that address. We scan gaming platforms, dating sites, job search platforms, and other similar resources.
Linked social media accounts. As part of the social account search by email, our scoring system identifies all accounts that are registered to an email address on global and local social networks.
Borrower's avatars. We analyze avatars and other images from publicly available profiles and determine if they show the same person.
To learn more about RiskSeal's email lookup capabilities, check out a detailed piece on Reverse Email Lookup in Credit Risk Assessment on our blog.
Along with email lookup, the use of an alternate data source called phone number lookup for identity verification shows good results.
This is due to the widespread coverage of the world's population by mobile phone operators:
Phone number lookup is one of the alternative credit data sources that allows you to get information about potential borrowers using their phone numbers.
At RiskSeal, such a check allows you to determine:
RiskSeal scoring system offers customers a powerful phone number lookup solution. With its help, you can reduce the threat of fraud, speed up the loan application decision process, reduce KYC costs, and expand your customer base.
We analyze a variety of databases, which allows us to provide the lender with detailed information about the potential borrower:
Phone number verification. Lenders are able to verify that the phone number belongs to the applicant. They also get information about a mobile operator and phone number and identify disposable, wrong numbers, and virtual SIM cards.
Linked online accounts. Thanks to a deep analysis of online resources, RiskSeal identifies all accounts registered on the web using the specified phone number. Fintech providers have access to user profile data, their avatars, and information about their activity on the page.
Device information. With RiskSeal, lenders get information about the type of device a potential borrower is using.
Learn more about RiskSeal's phone number lookup method in our article on improving credit scoring with it.
IP lookup is another alternative data source for lending, actively used by RiskSeal.
Analyzing the unique identifier of a device on the web provides a wide range of information about each internet user.
This technology opens up a lot of opportunities for digital lenders, as over 60% of the world's population is active online.
IP lookup is a method of obtaining data about a potential borrower based on IP address.
The IP analysis process determines the type of IP address and other information:
Alternative data platform RiskSeal uses advanced IP address analysis technology to help credit organizations optimize credit risk management.
Here is a list of the data that RiskSeal's analysis allows you to obtain:
Geolocation of the loan applicant. You will have access to information about the country, city, and even the approximate address of the person. The data obtained can be compared with the data specified in the application.
Data about the internet provider. Find out which company provides the user with access to the Network.
Type of IP address. The borrower could potentially use a residential, datacenter, mobile, or business IP address. Keep in mind that mobile IP addresses change more frequently, so it may be more difficult to find the borrower later - for example, for debt collection.
Use of VPN, proxy server, or TOR. If this is detected, the borrower will be assigned a higher risk level.
Learn more about IP Analysis in our story.
RiskSeal searches email and phone numbers in real-time. Our solution searches for applicant enrollment data and photos on over 140 online platforms:
We analyze not only global internet platforms but also local resources.
For example, in India, Flipkart, AltBalaji, SnapDeal and many others are sure to be scanned.
In Mexico – DiDi, Rappi, Telcel, AT&T, Indeed or Computrabajo.
In Nigeria – Jumia, Jiji, MyJobMag, PropertyPro, Betfair, etc.
Having analyzed the data, we draw certain conclusions. For example, if a person uses premium services (Apple, Samsung), this indicates their solvency.
If the applicant has paid subscriptions (such as Netflix or Spotify) and makes monthly payments on time, this indicates that the applicant is reliable.
Having an account on LinkedIn or other professional resources is a very good indicator. This means that the applicant most likely has a job and is building a career.
We can also get information about place of employment, position, education, and experience on such platforms.
RiskSeal platform is not only about enriching your scoring models with alternative credit data.
We also have different ways to analyze and verify credit applicants:
Explore detailed information about these identity verification techniques in our blog.
RiskSeal's scoring system instantly generates a 360-degree view of key user metrics.
This includes an applicant's ready-to-use digital credit score.
In addition, we provide over 300 data points that can be used for feature engineering.
Learn more about our capabilities in the About us section, and check out our pricing policy on our Pricing page.
The RiskSeal platform gathers data on potential borrowers by analyzing their digital footprint. We analyze applicants' activity on social media and other online platforms using advanced email, phone number, and IP lookup methods.
Email account lookup is a search for borrower information by email address.
It includes checking the deliverability of emails, online accounts registered to this address, domain information, date of mailbox creation, and various violations, including spamming, blacklisting, and more.
Phone number lookup allows you to assess the creditworthiness of an applicant by knowing only phone number.
Using this method, you can find data about the phone number, cell phone operator, and SIM card and identify online accounts registered to this number.
It is also possible to check whether the subscriber's registration data coincides with the data specified in the application and whether the country code corresponds to the IP address.
Any discrepancies will indicate a high risk of fraud.
IP address lookup is a tool that allows determining the geolocation of the borrower, detecting the presence of blacklists and IP address encryption, as well as checking if the applicant's location matches the one indicated in the loan application.
To obtain the most reliable results, RiskSeal analyzes global and local web resources.
The former include social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, SnapChat, etc.), messengers (WhatsApp, Skype, Viber, etc.) and other platforms (Amazon, eBay, Netflix, etc.) that are popular all over the world.
The list of local platforms will vary depending on the region where the lending organization operates. For example, for India it is Flipkart, AltBalaji and SnapDeal, for Mexico – DiDi, Rappi and Telcel, for Nigeria – Jumia, Jiji and MyJobMag.
For identity verification, our scoring system uses innovative Face recognition, Name intelligence, and Location match methods.
The essence of these methods is that the discrepancy between the information received, and the data specified in the loan application, will be a reason to suspect fraud on the part of the borrower.
To generate a digital credit score, the alternative data platform RiskSeal uses information obtained by analyzing a borrower's digital footprint and verifying their identity.
Examples of factors that positively influence the digital credit score are having accounts in professional social networks and using premium services.
Negatively affecting the credit score are overdue payments on subscriptions, mismatched avatars in different accounts, and others.