Forget credit rating, your social media posts may decide whether you will get a loan or not
The Economic Times, By Joel Robello, Saloni Shukla, ET Bureau December 13, 2017 Loan officers at Kotak Mahindra Bank are spending more time in reading your Facebook posts, SMSes and payment data available in your mobile phone to decide whether to sanction a loan for you to buy a home or car, rather than relying solely on whether you repaid your credit card dues two decades ago. As banks sharpen their internal assessment of risk before lending, they are investing in analytics, data gathering and use of social media more now than on conventional tools like score from credit information bureaus, which capture borrowing behaviour. It is not just Kotak but others too, such as HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and even state-owned banks like State Bank of India, which use social media behaviour not only for loan sanctions but also for tailoring sales pitch for products. They track data captured in Google Maps, payment to Uber cabs, or even your electricity bill payment records. "Cre