Product and Services Offered by Equifax Consumer Bureau

Equifax India is registered as Equifax Credit Information Services Private Limited (ECIS), headquartered in Mumbai. It is a joint venture between Equifax Inc., USA and seven leading financial institutions in India, namely—State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India, Kotak Mahindra Prime Limited, Religare Finvest Limited, Sundaram Finance Limited and Union Bank of India. It provides credit information services and business analytics amongst other credit-related services.

Equifax assists lending institutions to manage risk proficiently through a combination of data and business analytics. The services offered by Equifax help lending institutions make better lending and business decisions, using international trademarked tools customized to meet Indian market standards and needs.

Equifax is one of the four credit bureaus in operation in India. It is an independent entity licensed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and registered under the Credit Information Companies Act, to provide its members with credit information products and related services. Its members include banks, NBFCs and other financial institutions. Member institutions are required to provide data regarding the borrower’s credit-related activities, including details like repayment history, total credit limit, defaults if any, age and number of credit accounts, loan and credit card applications, among other information. Equifax aggregates this data and then presents it in a highly readable format for individual consumers and businesses. This information enables lenders to make informed decisions and enables them to function more efficiently.

Equifax provides many products and services related to credit and allied products. Following is a snapshot of the products offered by Equifax Consumer Bureau.

Banking and financial institutions are faced with constant challenges—from complying with new government regulations and policies to acquiring and managing customers in an unstable marketplace. Hence it becomes vital for lenders to acquire, manage and retain the right consumers for their finance products. Equifax helps lenders understand their customers by offering a wide array of services butyl to offer insight into a potential borrower.

For lenders, Equifax provides

- A consolidated and comprehensive depiction of a borrower’s credit behaviour across all loan accounts held, including the repayment history/behavior as reported by the lenders. It also provides identification information, address and other demographic information of the potential borrower as reported by member companies. Lenders are able to take a call on a prospective borrower’s creditworthiness based on the data provided by the contributing members – the Credit Information Reports and Enhanced credit information reports.

From a borrower's viewpoint, Equifax provides

Access to his/her credit report, credit score and credit history as reported by the lender. This helps eradicate duplication, incorrect information and helps identify fraud or ID theft. Access to credit information report also helps keep a tab on one's repayment track, leading to good credit behavior.

From a borrower's perspective, it is important that an individual checks his/her credit report every once in a quarter, to ensure that their data is reported accurately by the lenders and to make sure that the information is up-to-date. This helps in eliminating erroneous reports due to mistaken identity, fraud and ID thefts. This ensures that decisions are made correctly by lenders while evaluating a prospective borrower.

Carefully scan it for any errors, and if you find any, file a dispute immediately and get it resolved. It is also suggested that you keep checking the credit information report from time to time to prevent possible misinformation due to administrative errors.

All other products are available only for registered members and authorized users of Equifax.

Other products and services provided by Equifax consumer bureau

Equifax Dimensions - Equifax Dimensions helps in enabling lenders to make stronger, more accurate decisions by understanding consumer credit behavior patterns. The attributes and trends include the past one year’s changes in balance, payment, days past due, credit utilization and credit limit to provide a comprehensive snapshot of the consumers’ credit management inclinations and abilities.

Prescreen of one - The few minutes of interaction of the customer with the lender is the best opportunity for the lender to better distinguish the customer and identify their needs. Equifax’s credit screening acquisition tool has been designed keeping the same in mind and helps organizations optimize time by screening consumers, cross-sell additional services and further deepen customer relationships. This tool helps in segmenting groups of customers for more targeted and tailored products. It also helps in making time-sensitive offers when consumers are likely to respond positively. This helps drives sales and helps in focusing on product management.

Prescreen works by tapping the information present with the Equifax database to identify the consumer’s inclination to avail finance as well as helps in identifying consumers who are less likely to default.

Credit Information Reports (CIR) - Equifax provides both lenders and borrowers with credit information reports. The Enhanced CIR is available only to lenders. Having access to CIR helps lenders make an informed decision on lending and helps borrowers to identify any potential errors and correct them. It also helps them be up to date with their credit health.

Equifax Alerts - Equifax provides its members with two kinds of alerts:

Activity Alerts, which are a series of credit event alerts delivered by utilizing data from Equifax's credit file. This tool alerts the lenders to credit-active customers in their portfolio who have lately demonstrated a need for additional credit and are seeking the same.

Collection Alerts, on the other hand, enables and empowers changes to the collection process by offering solutions and tools designed to optimize collection efforts and thereby reduce the amount of money spent on collection activities. Meaning this tool will help lenders identity when the time is ripe for initiating collection activity by strategic credit-based triggers that flag when a consumer's ability to repay has improved. Conversely, it alerts the lenders when a borrower’s ability to pay is falling, so that collection activity may be suspended to avoid incurring extra costs.

Equifax Portfolio Review

The Equifax portfolio review solution is designed to help lenders capitalize on predictive insight; this helps to assure profit and generate revenue. Equifax provides the portfolio review product jointly with Alerts. A portfolio review can be run on consumer accounts when an Alert is triggered.

Equifax Risk Score - A relatively new product, the Equifax Risk Score helps leverage the most recent data from its members. The Equifax risk score is designed to predict the likelihood of a customer defaulting in the next 12 months.

The Equifax Risk Score also scores those who are new entrants to credit. This is the first product in the market to do so. It helps validate the repayment abilities of fresh borrowers to the lenders, particularly when the credit history available is severely limited.