Mifos Credit bureau Integration. (Risk calibration Module -RCM)
As a part of GSOC-16, I would be working on Mifos credit bureau integration under the guidance of Nayan Ambali and Ashok Auty.
Overview:
Currently, there is no feature for reporting credit history in Mifos. This module will give ability to clients to check the credit history of the loan applicant and consequently mitigate the risk to bad debt.Along with checking, RCM would also allow client organizations to report to credit bureaus. This feature of Credit reporting and credit checking is optional and may be incorporated based on the requirements of the client organization..
Scope:
After having initial discussion with Equifax, it was found that even if the brand is the same (here Equifax), due to regulatory requirements and other factors, credit bureaus in different country would have different reporting and response standards. Thus initially, we would focus on standards of Indian credit bureaus. Later, after acquiring standards from other regions, we can make minor changes and accommodate credit bureaus from all regions. RCM currently aims to integrate two credit bureaus – Highmark and Equifax. RCM would provide an out-of-box functionality to report credit histories to these credit bureaus. It would also have the ability to fetch report from the credit bureaus and parse it for ready reference of loan officer. This module will report both positive and negative credit history
.
Note:
Architecture and description is heavily dependent on credit bureau’s requirements. Currently, I am liaising with Credit Bureaus to figure out their standards and requirements. The description and functionality might slightly vary later from the current version based on interactions with credit bureaus.
Detailed description and deliverables.
RCM in phase one would deliver the following features:
1) It would prepare reports to be uploaded directly to the credit bureau of choice. This feature would be available as scheduled job, using quartz scheduler wherein the client Organization would be able to configure the time and consequently the job would be triggered. Uploading the reports to the credit bureau would mark the end of this job.
2) Currently, two credit bureaus are planned to be integrated – CRIFHighMark and Equifax.
3) The report generated would be viewable for the client.
4) RCM would also give ability to fetch the credit history from the credit bureau.This feature would serve as an interface to request client history for risk evaluation purposes. RCM would send the required identifiers to the credit bureau and then parse the response from the credit bureau.
5) Accessing someone’s credit history is a sensitive operation, and hence the request and response would be logged for audit purposes.
6) The module would not allow the user to request for credit check unless it finds an active loan application in the repository.
7) RCM would also have the functionality to send the credit report to the customer in the event of loan application being denied.
8) In case of self-help groups, RCM would have the ability to fetch bulk reports of individual members. If the majority of the members are not in good standing, the loan officer would be in a good position to make a valid decision.
9) RCM would also have a check in the internal loan history table if the customer has any active/closed loans.
10) Also, the personally identifiable data( identifiers like Adhar,Pancard etc) would be encrypted, to provide additional security coverage.
11) Internal bookkeeping of reports would also be done in new tables in Client Organisation’s repository, which they may wish to contribute to Mifos open source Credit bureau planned in near future.
Long term Goals:
1) In the long run, RCM would be developed as full-fledged risk calibration module for clients wherein loan officers would be able to see the customer’s self-declared debt and also fetch history from credit bureaus in a consolidated view.
2) RCM would also provide the ability to define the eligibility criteria and also display compliance for these criteria by customers.
3) Framework/Module/Wizard would be added to enable clients to add the credit bureau of their choice.
4) Community also has plans to implement a full-fledge, open-source credit bureau in the near future
5) Following additional fields would also be included in Report along with several other recommendations provided in the following report:
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/FINANCIALSECTOR/Resources/Credit_Reporting_text.pdf
Fields:
a) Number of years that the customer has been an account holder or member of the MFI
b) Number of cycles of loans taken out by the customer.
c) Average loan balance over the last 6 months.
d) Average debt/asset ratio maintained over the past 6 months( if Client organisation is accepting deposits as well)
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Timeline and implementation plan:
Currently the project has been split up into three modules being tracked as three sub tasks :
1) Configuration module: MIFOSX-2714 - Getting issue details... STATUS
In this module, the admin User will have the ability to map the credit bureaus with the loan products. This module will ask send request for credit check to credit bureau interface and would parse the display the response to Loan officers for theri ready reference.
Time line: 3 weeks and 2 days: 26 May - 17 June
2) Equifax Integration: MIFOSX-2716 - Getting issue details... STATUS
Integration of Equifax into Mifos. This module will provide infrastructure for request/response to and from Equifax
Timeline: 2 weeks: 20 June - 1 July
3) Translation Module: MIFOSX-2717 - Getting issue details... STATUS
This module will report data to credit bureaus.
ETA for all the above tasks would be August 10. The deliverables would be as follows:
1) 2 credit Bureaus would be integrated.
2) Cron job for data submission to credit bureaus.
3)integration of credit check with loan application.