中国网贷机构用社交媒体数据评估信贷风险

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.

中国一家顶级网贷机构披露出，该国蒸蒸日上的金融科技行业使用个人信息——包括检视社交媒体联系人列表——来评估信贷风险，已到了何种另类程度。

“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.

“如果我们发现，你的(社交媒体)好友包括来自娱乐业或金融业的重要人物，那么我们会认为你一定是在某种程度上值得信赖的……因为，如若不然，你不可能有这类朋友，”聚宝互联科技(Jubao Internet Technology)联合创始人陈曦(Jesse Chen)说。聚宝是中国排名靠前的P2P网贷公司之一。

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

跟腾讯(Tencent)一样，聚宝是新一波利用社交媒体数据评估信贷风险的中国网络金融公司之一。

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.

聚宝是中国大型企业集团之一、以航空为主业的海航集团(HNA Group)的子公司，由此取得了大部分数据。“通过保险、旅游、航空和购物服务，我们掌握了关于约1亿人的信息，”陈曦说。

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

在信贷数据极为零散、不易获取的中国，此类信息具有极高的价值。

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

由银行贷款违约和偿还纪录构成的传统信贷评级数据，把持在中国央行手中。

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，只有银行才能获得这类数据，但去年，中国央行批准包括腾讯和阿里巴巴(Alibaba)在内的8家公司访问央行信贷评级数据库。

“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.

“如果你并非来自这类大公司，你就必须跟它们组建一家合伙企业，才能获得信贷数据，”科技类股权研究公司86证券研究(86 Research)的顾问王晓燕(音译)说。

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，央行数据库的覆盖范围很窄，对低收入借款人和中小企业(SME)的覆盖面尤其窄。陈曦估计，央行数据库覆盖了全国人口的三分之一。

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”.

结果是，纽约市立大学(City University of New York)的王家卓说，“许多网贷平台开始寻找尽职调查的其他渠道”。

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.

客户仅仅点击一下，就能把自己的聚宝账户链接至移动通讯服务微信(WeChat)的账户或者类似推特(Twitter)的在线平台微博(Weibo)的账户，从而允许聚宝访问他们的社交媒体数据。

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.

咨询机构安永(EY)的亚洲金融科技业务主管詹姆斯•劳埃德(James Lloyd)警告称，交易历史仍然是信贷评分的核心组成部分。“社交媒体数据可能成为交易历史之外的一个评判标准，但它不能替代交易数据的作用，”他说。

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.

在美国，有关隐私保密的监管压力加上歧视的可能性，导致网贷机构不敢使用用户的Facebook行为去衡量风险。

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

但在中国，“P2P行业受到的监管程度相对较低，所以他们开始尝试各种新方法，”王晓燕(音译)说。