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Equifax has been recognised as an ABA100 Winner in The Australian Business Awards 2021 for Product Innovation and New Product Innovation for Equifax One Score.

Many a credit officer wishes they could stop SME customer drop-offs during the loan acquisition process. Many a bank customer service rep craves to avoid badgering their customers for financial paperwork that they have neither the time nor inclination to gather. 

There are some updates coming to the Document Verification Service (DVS) and the Commonwealth electoral roll that may impact how you use IDMatrix.

Equifax, the global data, analytics and technology company, has announced a partnership with leading HR and Payroll software provider Frontier Software. A first in the Australian market, the partnership will enable Frontier Software and its customers to streamline the employment income verification process and mitigate data handling risks in loan applications with automated employment income verification.

Employers need to find ways to meet the shifting expectations of their employees for better work-life balance. Critical to the employee value proposition is creating a humanised employee experience that recognises and respects that work and life experiences are intertwined.

Rebound now hit by Pandemic Second-Wave

For the first time in three years, consumer credit demand has moved out of negative territory. According to the latest Quarterly Consumer Credit Demand Index (June 2021), demand recovered sharply in the June quarter (+29.1%), with applications for credit cards, Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), personal loans, auto loans and mortgages all experiencing double-digit growth. A drop in the momentum of recovery is expected in the third quarter, with stay-at-home pandemic orders impacting around 10 million Australians

Q2 2021 figures show double-digit growth in business credit demand, with solid gains across all categories of credit, according to the latest Equifax Quarterly Business Credit Demand Index (June 2021). Sustaining this pace of recovery into the third quarter is now under question as second-wave pandemic lockdowns show signs of dampening credit demand in NSW and Victoria.

Cybersecurity readiness doesn't come easily. Reacting to a security breach is vastly different from being ready to act should a breach occur. Many organisations haven't previously focused on proactively protecting their critical information assets, but change is coming. The increased sophistication of today's threat actors heightens the chances that more organisations will find themselves the unlucky targets of cybercrime.

A potential borrower with no defaults but a poor repayment history applies for a loan with a lender who uses only negative bureau data in their credit decisioning. Other things being equal, their application is likely to be approved. The same borrower applies to a lender with access to Comprehensive Credit Reporting (CCR) data, only to have their application rejected. 

The difference? One lender made their decision based solely on negative-only credit information like defaults, bankruptcies and the number of credit enquiries. The other lender made their decision based on both negative and positive CCR data. This lender could see that the applicant had a history of paying late and had many loans with multiple lenders.

Rejecting a loan applicant because there is not enough information on their credit file to determine their risk can mean giving away a creditworthy customer. 

In today's disrupted marketplace, where customer-centricity and growth are crucial, there is a significant benefit to separating the likely good borrowers from the likely bad borrowers among those with limited credit history.