CashlessConsumer runs a fortnightly series of deep dive sessions on the technology powering payments, policy implications and real-world practice of digital payments.

A New Era for Credit Scoring

The Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC) has published a new report, A New Era for Credit Scoring: Financial Inclusion, Data Security, and Privacy Protection in the Age of Digital Lending, that examines the trade-offs associated with digital lending platforms in India. By providing small loans to consumers through their mobile phones, lending apps have broadened access to credit for low-income borrowers. But they have also introduced new threats to fairness, privacy, and digital security, as lenders use an array of personal data — including age, location, and even personal contacts — to gauge an individual’s willingness and ability to pay.

In the current session, the author of the white paper, Tarunima Prabhakar will be presenting the study followed by discussion on alternate credit scoring, digital lending by discussants and audience Q & A

Who should participate:

• Practitioners from fintech and digital payments, including engineers and product managers.
• Bankers, Academics interested in financial inclusion.
• Journalists who report on Fintech and are looking for education on industry trends and practices.
• Anyone interested in knowing more about financial inclusion, alternate credit scoring, data practices and digital lending.

About the Speaker, Discussants: Tarunima Prabhakar is the project lead at Tattle, a civic tech project to enable people to better understand the content they see on chat apps. Her broader research is at the intersection of technology, policy and global development. As a research fellow at Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity at UC, Berkeley she studied the impact of machine learning and predictive analytics on access to credit in India. As a practitioner, she has worked on ICTD and data driven development projects with non-profits and tech companies in Asia and the United States.

Beni Chugh researches financial inclusion & fintech at Dvara Research. Praneeth Bodduluri runs Base Financial Technology Consultancy based in Bengaluru.

About CashlessConsumer: CashlessConsumer is a consumer collective working on digital payments to increase awareness, understand technology, produce / consume data, represent consumers in policy of digital payments ecosystem to voice consumer perspectives, concerns with a goal of moving towards a fair cashless society. Read more on the website, blog, follow @cashlessconsumer on Mastodon, join our chatter group on Telegram and watch our older conversations on Youtube

Paper

• A new era for Credit Scoring - White paper - Blogpost
• Financial Inclusion as A Fairness Criterion in Credit Risk Assessment - Tarunima Prabhakar, Steve Weber, CLTC UC Berkeley