RCBC developing scorecard for unbanked Filipinos

MANILA, Philippines — Yuchengco-led Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) is looking to develop a scorecard to help provide credit to the country’s unbanked population.

Bennett Santiago, head of the credit management group at RCBC, said the listed bank wants to address the challenges in evaluating loans to the unbanked in order to accelerate financial inclusion through data analytics.

“From a credit perspective, we are trying to find ways to make credit available to the unbanked, based on how they spend government subsidies,” Santiago said in a webinar organized by the Asian Bankers Association (ABA) and the Association of Credit Rating Agencies in Asia (ACRAA),

The scorecard will help assess the risk profile of the unbanked, challenged with having no credit and banking history. The score will be improved by utilizing external data such as personality, behavioral and public data.

Furthermore, there will be push for financial literacy and discipline to improve credit eligibility.

Santiago said the bank saw the importance of data analytics during the pandemic.

“We needed to have a differentiated customer review. We couldn’t have a one size fit all type of monitoring. We should spend more time on high risk and low risk accounts, (and) this is where the possibility of digitization, automation, machine learning happens for credit risk management,” Santiago said.

He said data analytics helped improve collection strategy during the pandemic and enabled the business to implement data-driven decisions to mitigate risk.

“Understanding delinquency drivers, on a customer level, was made possible through the use of data science and analytics,” Santiago said.

Meanwhile, the Credit Information Corp. (CIC) has classified RCBC as an accessing entity allowing the bank to access borrowers’ credit information either directly from the CIC or through any of its accredited bureaus, namely CIBI Information Inc., CRIF Philippines, and Transunion Information Solutions.

The Yuchengco-led universal bank can now better assess its borrower’s credit history, and accelerate its loan approval process.