Author: Matt Mckie

It’s no secret that South African banks and financial services providers draw on massive volumes of data to make decisions and provide targeted services to middle and upper-income earners. When assessing individual credit applications, for example, banks will draw on highly detailed customer profiles and many years of data collection. However, in the midst of a global health crisis and widespread economic shutdowns, many traditional data sources for credit decision-making have become far less reliable. Extended national lockdowns have significantly reduced data flows from traditional data sources and, in many instances, have rendered them less useful (as many households begin…