TRANSUNION, a global full-service credit bureau operating in the Philippines, said on Wednesday it is expanding its services in the country to include consumers and small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
Pia Arellano, president and CEO of TransUnion Philippines, said the expansion seeks to make its services inclusive and not limited to business partners.
The company started operating in the country in 2011, partnering with local banks led by BDO Universal Bank, Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), HSBC, Metrobank and Citibank, to manage the first comprehensive private credit bureau in the country.
At the beginning, the company’s data base included 5 million customers, increasing today to 18.5 million, Arellano said.
“This is to make our services inclusive, since a huge segment of the population remains unbanked, unserved by the country’s financial institutions including banks,” she said.
Arellano said their partner financial institutions need access to an accurate database they can rely on when evaluating the credit-worthiness of potential borrowers.
Extending their services to consumers, not only businesses, will create a wider database that will serve more industries and serve as a reliable source of information to the country’s lending institutions to minimize the risk they take when lending money, she said.
Today, TransUnion has partnered with cooperatives, rural banks, thrift banks, as well as pawnshops to extend their services even to small lenders in Metro areas, as well as far-flung rural centers.
It maintains offices in Hong Kong and the Philippines, but does business mainly through government bureaus particularly in Thailand and Singapore, as well as in the rest of the Asia-Pacific region.
TransUnion gives credit scores to potential, as well as actual borrowers to guide would-be lenders on the credit-worthiness of their customers.
Arellano said because of this banked information, banks and other lending institutions are now more confident to give and extend credit to borrowers.
TransUnion remains high on the Philippines, whose delinquency rate of 4 percent inspires the company’s continued confidence on the country’s economic and financial maturity, Arellano said.