Experian India Catching Up with CIBIL on Customers

Experian IndiaExperian is one of the four credit bureau license holders in India – CIBIL, CRIF Highmark and Equifax being others. In the global pecking order, Experian is 2X Equifax and 4X Transunion globally. In India TransUnion (CIBIL) has a larger presence.

In India, there are two entities, Experian Services India – 100% sub, decision analytics, marketing services (CheetahMail – world’s largest email marketing platform), business information (international reports).

Experian India: (1) 210 mn+ customers (2) 600 mn + address (3) 150 mn+ mn name variations; 60 mn+ identity variations. Credit accounts: (1) 380 mn+ current credit accounts; roughly 2 lines of credit per person; so ~200 mn active credit accounts in individual segment (2) 18 mn+ commercial accounts; div 2.5 => 7.2 mn credit (3) 40 mn+ active accounts (MFI). Other metrics: (1) 43 Hunter CUG (2) 17 Insurance CUG (3) 19K+ pin code (4) 0.7mn+ census administrative units. Globally, Experian has (1) 890 mn people and 103 mn businesses around the world (2) 0.5 mn hosted origination solutions help clients to process half a million decisions every day (3) 400+ data scientists and businesses in 39 countries.

All four licensees now have data parity. CIBIL is still dominant but this will change over the next few years. Differentiator: (1) Spread of offering including analytics (2) Product spread: CIR and account review only earlier; now 18 different products available. Variety of products helps in customer stickiness. (3) Technology connectivity is becoming critical.

All bureaus put together have a revenue base of US$30 mn. New bureaus will take market share from CIBIL but more importantly, expansion will take place. Telecom, insurance will be serviced; other sectors to emerge.

Credit Bureaus were used for scores only; whereas Experian is being used for its automated decisioning on (1) Identity (UID, Bureau, PAN, etc.): over time, at least for Sec A, this will not need to be done as bureaus will maintain a lot of this data. (2) Intent – fraud check and fraud solution: 1.5 mn banking and telecom applications pass through them. (3) Capacity: one score is not enough; leverage is more important.

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