Credit Reporting Systems and the International Economy


Book Description

The first comprehensive review of credit reporting systems worldwide, including their institutional forms and evidence of their impact on financial markets. Credit reporting is a critical part of the financial system in most developed economies but is often weak or absent in developing countries. It addresses a fundamental problem of credit markets: asymmetric information between borrowers and lenders that can lead to adverse selection and moral hazard. The heart of a credit report is the record it provides of an individual's or a firm's payment history, which enables lenders to evaluate credit risk more accurately and lower loan processing time and costs. Credit reports also strengthen borrower discipline, since nonpayment with one institution results in sanctions with others. This book provides the first comprehensive review of credit reporting systems worldwide and documents the rapid growth in the industry. It offers empirical and theoretical evidence of the impact of credit reporting on financial markets, using examples from both developed and developing economies. Credit reporting, it shows, significantly contributes to predicting default risk of potential borrowers, which promotes increased lending activity. The book also covers the role of public policy in the development of credit reporting initiatives, including the role of public credit registries managed by central banks; and the role of legal, regulatory, and institutional factors in supporting credit reporting.




Creditworthy


Book Description

The first consumer credit bureaus appeared in the 1870s and quickly amassed huge archives of deeply personal information. Today, the three leading credit bureaus are among the most powerful institutions in modern life—yet we know almost nothing about them. Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion are multi-billion-dollar corporations that track our movements, spending behavior, and financial status. This data is used to predict our riskiness as borrowers and to judge our trustworthiness and value in a broad array of contexts, from insurance and marketing to employment and housing. In Creditworthy, the first comprehensive history of this crucial American institution, Josh Lauer explores the evolution of credit reporting from its nineteenth-century origins to the rise of the modern consumer data industry. By revealing the sophistication of early credit reporting networks, Creditworthy highlights the leading role that commercial surveillance has played—ahead of state surveillance systems—in monitoring the economic lives of Americans. Lauer charts how credit reporting grew from an industry that relied on personal knowledge of consumers to one that employs sophisticated algorithms to determine a person's trustworthiness. Ultimately, Lauer argues that by converting individual reputations into brief written reports—and, later, credit ratings and credit scores—credit bureaus did something more profound: they invented the modern concept of financial identity. Creditworthy reminds us that creditworthiness is never just about economic "facts." It is fundamentally concerned with—and determines—our social standing as an honest, reliable, profit-generating person.




Retail Credit Risk Management


Book Description

Introducing the fundamentals of retail credit risk management, this book provides a broad and applied investigation of the related modeling theory and methods, and explores the interconnections of risk management, by focusing on retail and the constant reference to the implications of the financial crisis for credit risk management.







The Credit Scoring Toolkit


Book Description

The Credit Scoring Toolkit provides an all-encompassing view of the use of statistical models to assess retail credit risk and provide automated decisions.In eight modules, the book provides frameworks for both theory and practice. It first explores the economic justification and history of Credit Scoring, risk linkages and decision science, statistical and mathematical tools, the assessment of business enterprises, and regulatory issues ranging from data privacy to Basel II. It then provides a practical how-to-guide for scorecard development, including data collection, scorecard implementation, and use within the credit risk management cycle.Including numerous real-life examples and an extensive glossary and bibliography, the text assumes little prior knowledge making it an indispensable desktop reference for graduate students in statistics, business, economics and finance, MBA students, credit risk and financial practitioners.







Worry-Free Money


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER "A fresh way to think about your money." David Chilton, author of The Wealthy Barber Stop budgeting. Start living. Managing your money can be frustrating and confusing. Life is expensive. Whether you make $30,000 or $130,000 a year, it can feel like you’re constantly broke. Can you afford that new car, that vacation, that night out? You think so, but it feels impossible to know. And rigid budgets that force you to spend your money in unrealistic ways (like $9.50 per week for pants) don’t make things any clearer. But what if there was a new way to manage your money? One that left you certain you had your bases covered—both for your monthly bills and your future retirement—and then let you enjoy your money by spending it. (Yes, really.) Enter Shannon Lee Simmons, a fresh voice in the world of personal finance, one who understands the new and very real pressures to survive modern life and keep up in the age of social media. Shannon doesn’t lecture, judge or patronize. The founder of the wildly popular New School of Finance, Shannon recognized that most of her thousands of financial planning clients felt broke, no matter what their income. And feeling broke can be as bad as actually being broke, because it leads to overspending and misery. So she came up with a new plan: Worry-Free Money. Worry-Free Money takes a fresh approach to finances, looking at the root cause of the pressure to spend and showing why traditional budgets don’t work. It is a deeply practical book that will help you break the cycle of guilt, understand why you overspend, banish unhappy spending from your life, learn to recognize your f*ck it moments and find hope—and fun—in getting your money under control.




Credit Scores & Credit Reports


Book Description

This book is a consumer instruction manual for the credit reporting and credit scoring systems. Although these credit systems directly effect the financial standing of millions of Americans, few people understand them.