Taking a loan is bittersweet. While there is someone to bail you out in time of need, the paperwork for getting a loan approval is a drag. There is a whole machinery involved, and it is far from efficient. The documents go to the lender’s back-office for processing. The details are entered manually on a spreadsheet, leaving room for clerical errors. Then, spreadsheets are computed. Finally, a credit team judges your creditworthiness.
Bank on this?
RBI checks out credit checker Perfios
A nine-year-old firm, that claims to be India’s largest, assesses creditworthiness of loan-seekers. But it is walking a fine line on data security. Can regulation be its inflection point?
Perfios has had to slowly build acceptance for its service as it uses screen scraping as one of the ways to collect data from bank statements
Lending institutions, for which this service is the most beneficial, are also spooked easily due to possible security risks
The Reserve Bank of India’s guidelines will eliminate some of the concerns about this business
But many aspects of the regulation are still unclear
