During Innovation Summit 2020, Eigil Arff Tarjem, CEO and founder of Defero presented how they have used data and analytics to create a platform where consumers can access their credit data and score for free. Defero was soft launched in May 2019 and has since then surpassed 60 000 member and is set to launch a comprehensive expansion of its platform by the end of 2020. Defero provides credit scores, budgeting tools and financial advice to its members for free. Defero’s algorithm further calculates the best available interest rate for each unique member, based on his or her personal data. As a result, Defero offers its members enhanced insights into and control of their personal data, thereby helping them make better and more informed financial decisions. The idea behind Defero came from Eigils backround working in the credit industry where he saw that a lot of companies in a lot of industries are using credit data to access risk and also a lot of consumers where paying to see their data.
As Eigil said himself:
“there should be a way to make a product that is solely based around providing individuals with this kind of data and most importantly showing then the value of this data and helping them to use the data”
An interesting part of Defero’s offering is that they are collecting interest data and matching this against the credit scores, this shows what interest rate you as a consumer should expect to get from you bank – based on your risk profile. Banks are pricing risk and the risk profiles of a customers should reflect the price meaning their interest rates in this case.
In Norway you get a credit score when you are credit active which means the first time you apply for a credit card and there are more that 4 000 000 Norwegians that are credit scored. Just a few of these knows their actual credit score. Defero is using the Experian credit scorecards to be able to provide their customers with data. In total we are using Delphi II and customized industry score cards towards the financial sector, consumer loan and telco sector. This gives their premium members access to three different credit scores which they can compare and see. A credit score is an objective default risk over the next 12 months meaning how much risk is it associated with loaning you money.
Banks and insurance companies uses this credit score as a parameter or super variable into their own scorecards, which has a direct influence into which opportunities you get.
Your credit score matters! Knowing your credit score has a direct influence on what terms of terms and conditions you should expect. – and we see this as our mission really to enlighten consumers the importance of credit scoring.
Defero has this database now with 62 000 Norwegian consumers and we have complete credit data on them. This is the long term value of Defero the database we are creating. Because as we aggregate complete financial data we are enabling our partners to onboard new customers that have the correct risk profile – it is a quite known gap between risk and the marketing and sales departments – especially within banks, where sales and marketing wants to onboard the maximum number of customers while the risk dep are holding back because they don’t want to high risk on their overall portfolio. So what we are doing we are using the same data as risk is looking at to enable marketing and sales to onboard customers with the right risk profile. So, we have created this data filter so that partners can say that we only want to have our ads exposed to people with their credit score above let say 700 and they must have an income of half a million a year and they must own a property. And that means that all of the traffic we are providing them are within the correct risk profile. The next is then to create pre-qualified offers. Data is value – we are now looking a new data sources – Debt registry, banks through PSD2 and a new product soon to be launched “CSID” – which will enable our members to monitor their data online for instance their credit cards too se if it has been hacked.