SIVABON

SIVABON application (Credit Worthiness Validation System) was developed by SIVECO Romania in collaboration with the Credit Bureau specialists and was implemented in 2004. The system manages a common database that comprises information about the retail customers, debtors, fraudulent persons and their accounts. 

The system manages both negative and positive data, generated from banking and non-banking sources.  

The database which is subject for monitoring is available to all the banks that participate in the system, being based on the following principles: 

• Principle of Reciprocity 
• Principle of Confidentiality 
• Principle of Impartiality and Correctness. 

How does SIVABON work?

Each banking customer included in SIVABON database has a risk coefficient associated, which is automatically calculated by the application, based on the due amount, the debt maturity or the severity of the irregularity.

For the good paying customers who do not have debts recorded in the system, the risk coefficient is calculated based on the payments’ history.

The system manages two categories of customers:  debtors and fraudulent persons. For the debtors, the risk coefficient is established depending on the owed amount and the debt maturity. For the fraudulent customers, the system automatically allocates the maximal degree of risk (Fraud).  Each financial institution participating at the system defines its own scale of risk for identifying the customers in each of the two risk categories.

For all the debtors, according to the principle of confidentiality, the participants in the system cannot see the details regarding the institution that reported them, but only an alias instead of the institution name. 

All the participants can see the debt value, the demographical details of the reported customer, etc. 

Benefits

As an immediate benefit, the system contributes to the substantial reduction of the money losses caused by the bad paying customers.  

In the case of detection of customers with debts or with other payment problems, the credit institutions will be able to take the necessary measures – demand an advance, specifying a reliable payment means, refusal of credit, etc.

• Promotes the behavior of good payer
• Ensures an easier and more reliable decision-making process
• Develops the analysis capacity for the participants in the system
• Guarantees the reliability of the Credit Bureau system
• Avoids the customers « over indebtedness »
• Eliminates the customers who access loans from several participants and do not pay them.

The development phases of SIVABON

​SIVABON project was developed in 3 stages:

• The first stage consisted in the banks sending to the Credit Bureau data about the persons with overdue payments higher than 30 days, about debtors who committed a legal offence in the relation with the bank for which a final judge decision was issued and about the persons who communicated false data at the moment of requesting the credit.  
• In the second stage that was implemented in 2005, the banks and the non-banking financial institutions started to send both negative and positive data about all the payments (repayment of installments) made by individuals for the credit, insurance and leasing products. Based on the positive data sent, SIVABON calculates the indebtedness degree of each credit applicant. 
• In view of reducing the credit risk, the Credit Bureau in collaboration with SIVECO Romania started in 2008 the third stage of the project – the scoring system – stage that was completed on 18th March 2009.

This indicator offers the banks with a clear forecast over the future behaviour of the debtor, based on the payment history combined with mathematical and statistic algorithms. This indicator aims at establishing if a customer will be able to pay the credit until the end. 

By also managing positive data, the Credit Bureau helps the good paying customers in their relation with the banks from Romania with the purpose of obtaining loans. The Credit Bureau acts thus as an advocate for the good paying customers who can benefit from more advantageous conditions when accessing a loan.  

Collaboration with FAIR ISAAC

For the integration of the credit scoring in the application implemented at the Credit Bureau, SIVECO Romania worked in partnership with the worldwide number one company on the market risk analysis products: FAIR ISAAC.

The FICO scoring contains all the data regarding the payments made for the credit, insurance and leasing products, with the purpose of establishing how good or bad payer is each individual who requests a loan. 

Based on these scores, the participants at the Credit Bureau system can make the decision regarding the granting of the loan.  

FICO Score helps the participants to obtain information with a high predictive value from the database. 

By combining the scoring with the information from the credit application and with the internal scoring, the banks can evaluate the credit risk associated to individuals with a significantly increased precision degree. At the same time, they can adjust the credit offers to the risk profile of the consumer and increase the degree of market penetration in a controlled, informed and flexible way. 

Based on the scoring, the participants in the Credit Bureau system (banking and non-banking financial institutions) can make a credit decision much faster and safer, with effect on the quality of the service and the cost of the credit. 

FICO Score from the Credit Bureau can be also used for fulfilling the requirements provisioned within Basel II Agreement with reference to calculating the banks’ capital so that it complies with a set of three major risk components:  

• credit risk
• operational risk
• market risk

Thus, FICO Score expresses the probability for a debtor to reimburse  the loan: the higher the score, the higher the probability of paying the installments in due time. 

The scoring brings benefits also for individuals, as the participants in the Credit Bureau system will improve the time and quality of the crediting decision with effect on the quality of the service and the cost of the credit. 

Conceived to be used irrespective of the nature of the Credit Bureau or the country in which such an institution functions, FICO Score represents an international standard for managing the credit risk associated to debtors. 

The Fair Isaac technology, which emphasizes the scoring model, allows its fast implementation in any country where there is a credit bureau. 

References

The first implementation of the solution dedicated to the Credit Bureau, SIVABON, was carried out in Romania, by SIVECO Romania:

• over 50 million credit reports issued during 2004 – 2014
• manages a shared database centered around information regarding individual customers, with due payments, fraudulent and their accounts
• tool for managing the information regarding the credit risk
• works with positive and negative data
• allows using the “score-cards” for centralizing the scoring or a specific banking scoring
• provides credit reports for the customers, by using uniform criteria.