中國網貸機構用社交媒體數據評估信貸風險

A leading online lender in China has revealed the unorthodox extent to which the country’s booming fintech sector uses personal information to assess credit risk — including examining social media contact lists.

中國一家頂級網貸機構披露出，該國蒸蒸日上的金融科技行業(yè)使用個人信息——包括檢視社交媒體聯系人列表——來評估信貸風險，已到了何種另類程度。

“If we find you are [social media] friends with celebrities from the entertainment or finance industries, we think you must be to some extent trustworthy . . . since otherwise you wouldn’t have such friends,” said Jesse Chen, co-founder of Jubao Internet Technology, one of China’s top three peer-to-peer lending firms.

“如果我們發(fā)現，你的(社交媒體)好友包括來自娛樂業(yè)或金融業(yè)的重要人物，那么我們會認為你一定是在某種程度上值得信賴的……因為，如若不然，你不可能有這類朋友，”聚寶互聯科技(Jubao Internet Technology)聯合創(chuàng)始人陳曦(Jesse Chen)說。聚寶是中國排名靠前的P2P網貸公司之一。

Jubao, along with Tencent, is among a new wave of Chinese online finance firms using social media data to assess credit risk.

跟騰訊(Tencent)一樣，聚寶是新一波利用社交媒體數據評估信貸風險的中國網絡金融公司之一。

Jubao gets much of its data through being a subsidiary of one of China’s biggest conglomerates, the aviation-centred HNA Group. “We have information on about 100m people from our insurance, travel, airline, and shopping services,” Mr Chen said.

聚寶是中國大型企業(yè)集團之一、以航空為主業(yè)的海航集團(HNA Group)的子公司，由此取得了大部分數據。“通過保險、旅游、航空和購物服務，我們掌握了關于約1億人的信息，”陳曦說。

Such information can be highly valuable in a country where credit data are patchy and not easily accessible.

在信貸數據極為零散、不易獲取的中國，此類信息具有極高的價值。

Traditional credit rating data, made up of banks’ records of loan defaults and repayments, are held by the central bank.

由銀行貸款違約和償還紀錄構成的傳統(tǒng)信貸評級數據，把持在中國央行手中。

This was previously only accessible by banks, but last year the central bank gave approval for eight companies including Tencent and Alibaba to access the database.

此前，只有銀行才能獲得這類數據，但去年，中國央行批準包括騰訊和阿里巴巴(Alibaba)在內的8家公司訪問央行信貸評級數據庫。

“If you aren’t one of these big companies, you have to enter a partnership with one to get access to credit data,” said Wang Xiaoyan, a consultant at tech-focused equity research firm 86 Research.

“如果你并非來自這類大公司，你就必須跟它們組建一家合伙企業(yè)，才能獲得信貸數據，”科技類股權研究公司86證券研究(86 Research)的顧問王曉燕(音譯)說。

Furthermore, the central bank’s database has poor coverage, particularly of low-income borrowers and SMEs. Mr Chen estimates that it covers a third of China’s population.

此外，央行數據庫的覆蓋范圍很窄，對低收入借款人和中小企業(yè)(SME)的覆蓋面尤其窄。陳曦估計，央行數據庫覆蓋了全國人口的三分之一。

As a result, said Jiazhuo Wang of the City University of New York, “many online lending platforms are looking for an alternative way to conduct due diligence”.

結果是，紐約市立大學(City University of New York)的王家卓說，“許多網貸平臺開始尋找盡職調查的其他渠道”。

Clients can give Jubao access to their social media data with a keystroke, by linking their Jubao account to their WeChat account — a mobile messaging service — or their Weibo account — an online platform similar to Twitter.

客戶僅僅點擊一下，就能把自己的聚寶賬戶鏈接至移動通訊服務微信(WeChat)的賬戶或者類似推特(Twitter)的在線平臺微博(Weibo)的賬戶，從而允許聚寶訪問他們的社交媒體數據。

James Lloyd, head of Asia fintech at the consultancy EY, cautions that a history of transactions still remains the core component of credit scoring. “Social media data can be a layer on top of that, but it doesn’t supplant transaction data,” he said.

咨詢機構安永(EY)的亞洲金融科技業(yè)務主管詹姆斯•勞埃德(James Lloyd)警告稱，交易歷史仍然是信貸評分的核心組成部分。“社交媒體數據可能成為交易歷史之外的一個評判標準，但它不能替代交易數據的作用，”他說。

In the US, regulatory pressures concerning privacy and the potential for discrimination have led online lenders to draw back from using Facebook activity to assess risk.

在美國，有關隱私保密的監(jiān)管壓力加上歧視的可能性，導致網貸機構不敢使用用戶的Facebook行為去衡量風險。

But in China, “the P2P sector is relatively unregulated, and so all sorts of new methods are being tried out,” said Ms Wang.

但在中國，“P2P行業(yè)受到的監(jiān)管程度相對較低，所以他們開始嘗試各種新方法，”王曉燕(音譯)說。