Credit Insights

FAQ's

1) What is Credit Insights Data as a Service (DaaS)?

Credit Insights DaaS provides de-identified Credit Application and Settlement data, giving deep insight into a customer’s performance throughout the entire customer lifecycle, highlighting the key metrics for each stage.

As an example, Credit Insights provides the number and total value of mortgage enquiries for an organisation in a geographic area or market segment compared to the total mortgage enquiries of all providers in the same area or segment. 

2) Where do you get the data from?

Credit Insights data is centred around the number and type of credit enquiries/applications submitted by different financial institutions that have access to and are members of the Equifax Credit Bureau. Meaning that if an organisation is not submitting data to the Equifax Bureau we will not be able to report on it.

3) Are there any limitations to the data?

There are cases where specific organisations may not have necessarily submitted all, or any, credit enquiries for specific products or for specific time periods. 

For example a national operating bank may not submit residential mortgage enquiries for a given month resulting in Equifax not being able to report on this information.

4) Do you remove or normalise errors in the data ?

The values are collected as part of bureau operations meaning there can be a variety of different systems or users submitting data into the reporting system, Equifax has controls in place around data entry criteria at point of credit enquiry or CCR reporting however in some instances there are still erroneous values in the report.

To combat erroneous values we apply data normalisation to enquiry values outside of expected ranges which are detailed below. 

NOTE: CCR data is not normalised in post processing as this is completed when submitted by the lender.

5 ) Are Equifax Risk Scores a part of the dataset?

Yes, Credit Insights offers multiple risk scores as part of the data set. For Credit Enquiries Equifax has ‘Equifax Apply Scores’ available, For Credit Accounts Equifax has ‘Equifax Manage Scores’ for delivery. With our latest Risk Score ‘One Score’ soon to be available for both Enquiries and Accounts.

6) What is the difference between a credit application and credit enquiry?

A credit application is a request for credit submitted by consumers to credit providers. A credit enquiry is a reference check on the consumer’s credit application which is submitted by the credit provider to theEquifax Credit Bureau. 

Credit Insights reports on the number and value of all credit enquiries/applications that are submitted to the bureau.

For example, a husband and wife apply for a home loan. If the credit provider runs a credit check on both the husband and the wife then both of the enquiries will be counted in Credit Insights. However if only the wife receives the application there will be only one result under Credit Applications.

7) How are reports delivered and accessed?

Reports are delivered as an excel (CSV) via SFTP.

8) What is the delivery schedule?

Credit Enquiry dataset is delivered Weekly on a Friday for the prior week (Sunday to Saturday).

Accounts Dataset is delivered Monthly as CCR data is collected on a monthly basis from credit providers.

9) The Volume and Value has changed for a particular period with the latest refresh. Why has this happened?

Each update is provided with a 6 month history based on the current view of the bureau data. There can be a number of situations that change the reporting for a period of time that are expected, these include; Corrections, Credit Bank’s, amendments, batch uploads etc. 

It is expected that within 6 months the volumes should change <1% in overall volume/value to reflect the most accurate and up to date record of the bureau.

10) Can you look at specific products within a ‘product type’ (e.g. Rewards Card vs Low Rates)?

No, unfortunately this data isn’t shared at a bureau level so we can’t split by product specifics.

11) What Does ‘Null’ represent in Credit Insights DaaS?

‘Null’ can represent one of three things, first it represents metrics/data that the client has not yet subscribed to; Secondly it can represent redacted data or Thirdly it can represent data that is unavailable/hasn’t been submitted to the bureau yet.

12) What are the redaction rules for Credit Insights DaaS?

The below redaction rules are put into place to reduce the risk of re-identification and are required for the product from a compliance standpoint.

The redaction rule applies to the following:

• Your own customer data does not apply to Total Market or other selected peer groups.
• Records where the total volume of enquiries or accounts is equal to or less than 10.

The total volume referred to here can be found in the below fields in the datasets:
- Enquiry dataset field = enquiry_volume
- Accounts dataset field = ‘volume’

• For a record that gets redacted, all other metrics except volume and value are automatically set to NULL to protect an individual from being re-identified.

13) What is the Custom Peer Group Policy?

The Custom Peer Group Policy for Credit Insights is as follows: 

• Minimum 6 members with a Maximum of 20
• Minimum 3 Individuals contributing at least 20% to the group
• No Individual contributing more than 50% to the group
• Peers can only be defined through their Parent/Member Groups.
• All custom peer groups require compliance approval.

14) What lenders are in each of the standard peer groups?

The makeup of these peer groups shift with the changes of the market and reclassification of lending products by various peers. As a result of this, as a general rule we do not share the makeup of these peer groups as they will not remain accurate.

15) How can I use the data?

Credit Insights data provides trusted insights across the entire customer lifecycle for Australian Credit Providers. This data can be used for multiple purposes.

• Benchmark your market share against your industry and peers.
• Measure your performance by lending product at every stage of the customer lifecycle
• Regularly measure the impact to your strategies
• Helps Product and Marketing teams analyse the impact of interest rate changes by looking at the number of enquiries received over time.
• Provides Product, Risk and Operations team an understanding around the dimensions that are converting at a higher or lower rate to others.
• Provides Risk, Operations, and Product teams with insights on the leavers segment. It provides details of the segment leaving by credit scores, the rate at which they’re leaving and the reason for leaving (i.e. refinancing versus successfully repaying loan)
• Providing an understanding of the risk profile of your business with information around accounts and your existing customer portfolio in relation to repayment history information (RHI).
• Provides Insight to all stakeholders including C Level and Company Boards.

16) Can Equifax supply the graphs?

At this stage Equifax only offers the .CSV DaaS file as part of the standard product.

17) What if I no longer want a data feature to be included in my subscription?

Data features can be removed at any time and will require reaching out to your sales specialist from where you will receive an updated SoW to be signed before removal of the data feature in question.

18) What if i want to add a data feature to my subscription?

Data features can be added at any time if they are available and will require reaching out to your sales specialist from where you will receive an updated SoW to be signed before delivery of the new data features.

19) “If we select an option like ‘New Account Opening Insights’, would we get data only for the Total Market, or also broken down by the Peer Group(s) we select?"

This is reported on each peer group being monitored e.g. Total Market + Big4 + Client + any additional custom or standard peer groups the client has subscribed to. As part of our setup process we need to check that the peer groups have enough contributors at similar levels so that individual lenders' behaviours can be identified.

For that reason, we recommend custom peer groups containing 6+ lenders so that it's easier to achieve and maintain approval of that peer group.

20) Is there a Metro Rural Indicator?

Metro_Rural is no longer an attribute offered as part of the product; it was used as an interim solution to increased geographical granularity. Now using Postcode or the ABS Statistical Area structure you can determine rurality as well as location within the state allowing you to roll up or down as required. Whereas using the metro rural indicator did not have the same granularity capability, as an example you wouldn't be able to distinguish regional centres like Cairns from Toowoomba because they are classified in the same way.

21) I can only see data to 30 Dec 2023 for accounts and 6 Jan 2024 for enquiries, is this right? I thought data was issued weekly?

For enquiries the data from the last supply should come up to the week starting 6 Jan 2024 (last enquiry Friday 12th Jan 2024).  For accounts, data on accounts are supplied to Equifax measured at monthly granularity (and most lenders supply monthly) so account data will always be in reference to a particular month and it will generally refer to the status of those accounts in the past month.  So while we will have received account data in January it would relate to December CCR statuses as January hasn't been closed off yet.  Also be aware that lenders have up to 3 months to supply CCR data so the data will change for the most recent months on each weekly supply and it is best practise to allow three months for the data to settle to final values when interpreting CCR related metrics.
   
22) What is a special score?

Actual production Equifax Apply Scores range from -200 to 1200 and then there are special scores that are assigned specifically encoded values below -900.  There are very few scores below 0 so those bands are designed to capture the key ranges.  Special scores are assigned for specific exceptions where a score would not be returned for cases such as a file ban for example.  Special scores are typically a small proportion where the most common cases are related to insolvency, and where an individual is already 90 DPD on an account at point of application. 
 
23) What does “tot_pos_score_num” & “tot_pos_score_value” relate to?

These two fields have been specifically designed to help you calculate average scores at whatever level of aggregation is desired.  

tot_pos_score_num: counts the number of records that received a valid score for the particular row (special scores would be excluded).  

tot_pos_score_value: records the sum of the scores for that row.  

The average score will then be avg_score = tot_pos_score_value/tot_pos_score_num.  This is done so the multiple rows can be aggregated and the average score of the result accurately calculated.  

For example if you wanted to determine the average score across applications in both NSW and VIC you would add these two fields across those rows and calculate the average in the same way as above.
  
24) What is conversion_vol / conversion_val / conversion_duration?

Conversion measures when we observe an enquiry leading to an account being opened as a result (same account type and lender).  

conversion_vol: is the total volume that has been converted,

conversion_val: is the total enquiry amounts that are converted.

conversion_duration: is the sum of the time elapsed between each enquiry and the resulting open account.  

The design here allows values to be calculated on any desired level of aggregation in the same way as the score fields.  

There are usually two metrics of particular interest conversion_rate = conversion_vol / enq_vol and average time to convert avg_conv_duration =  conversion_duration / conversion_vol.

Note that these metrics rely on CCR data and as such take approx 3 months to settle to reliable values so be cautious in interpreting the results for recent weeks.