Cibil eyes client base expansion

Moving beyond the realm of collating credit information for banks, Credit Information Bureau (India) Limited, (Cibil) is looking at expanding its client base to telecom companies, auto insurance firms and micro finance institutions.

Cibil plans to roll out the new services by the next financial year, according to Arun Thukral, managing director, Cibil.

The company is in talks with top telecom companies for data servicing, which in turn is expected to help them retain customers, once mobile number portability is in place.

For MFIs, Cibil has already started preliminary discussions with Alpha Micro Finance Consultants, a network of 30 non-banking financial company (NBFC) MFIs, to share data on borrowers.

Unlike banks, MFIs do not have high delinquency rates due to robust collection methods, but the data would help them check multiple borrowings, and also create a database of rural borrowers, said Thukral.

MFIs at present have a database of 22 million borrowers, and they expect to have 100 million customers in one year, he added.

This apart, Cibil is also planning to come out with two new products on mortgage depository and frauds ( Cibil Detect) in the next few months.

“There have been instances when the same paper has been used to avail loans from different banks. The mortgage depository services will help in keeping a check on such cases. Cibil Detect will help identify suspected frauds,” said Thukral.

At present Cibil has a database close to 160 million trades across individuals and businesses. As on April 2010, the consumer bureau maintains more than 157 million records, while the commercial bureau maintains 4.3 million records.

Members of Cibil include banks, financial institutions, non-banking financial companies and housing finance companies.