Credit Score Archives – George Alex Popescu

The majority of the developing world population makes little use or no use of financial services. Accenture estimates that only 70 percent of microenterprises in an emerging country like India use bank accounts while only 5 percent use products like term loans, and a paltry 1 percent have working capital loans from banks. In similar emerging markets, lenders find it difficult to make credit decisions due to weak coverage of credit rating agencies. On average, only 10 percent have credit scores.

One company that understands the riches lying at the bottom of the pyramid is Entrepreneurial Finance Lab (EFL GLOBAL). EFL helps lenders capture untapped markets by delivering credit scoring technology tailored for such markets.

How EFL Uses Psychometrics to Determine Credit Risk

EFL Global is a pioneer in psychometric credit scoring and was founded in 2010 by Dr. Bailey Klinger and Dennis (DJ) DiDonna. The company is headquartered in Miraflores, Lima, Peru.

Dr. Klinger is executive chairman. Prior to co-founding EFL, he served as a senior advisor and consultant to various government and multilateral institutions. DiDonna is chief strategy officer. Previously, he worked at MCM Strategic Data and Angie’s List as a technology entrepreneur with a background in sales and operations management.

Before online lending, long before Credit Karma, and way before machine learning powered by cloud-based applications, if a person or business needed to clean up their credit in order to apply for and be approved for a loan, perhaps even getting a loan on better terms, they had to write letters to each credit bureau where bad actions were recorded and ask to have those actions removed. That may have also entailed working out a payment plan with creditors who reported those actions in order to get in their good graces. Levi King understands that process well.

He also understands the challenges of being a small business owner. Having owned a hotel, a management company, a retail financial services company, and several franchises–all before co-founding Lendio and Nav–he’s seen countless small business owners with low credit problems.

“I’ve applied for financing about 30 different times,” he said, “and learned the hard way how it all works.”

Tag: Credit Score

Pychometric Credit Scoring for the Developing World

How EFL Uses Psychometrics to Determine Credit Risk

Credit Karma for businesses: monitoring credit for small businesses