TransUnion to deliver more Credit solutions to Rwandans

They were speaking on Wednesday night at a cocktail meeting with their stakeholders in Rwanda at Ubumwe Grande Hotel in the Central Business District.

Chad Reimers, the Senior Director for TransUnion Africa, said that the company was stepping up its efforts to position itself as an information company that is solving bigger problems associated with financial inclusion.

“What we are trying to do here is to solve big problems. As a credit reference company, we have a number of credit solutions we can bring to this [Rwandan] market where we have been operating for the past five years,” Reimers told guests at the evening cocktail meeting.

He revealed that the insurance industry has been extraordinarily part of TransUnion’s operations globally, highlighting that there are a number of sector.

TransUnion is Rwanda’s credit reference bureau that works with financial institutions, insurance companies and retailers to provide insights into their respective consumers’ credit health. It has been operating in Rwanda since 2010.

According to Reimers, TransUnion’s client base in Rwanda has been growing overtime. At the moment, the global company is working with 14 banks, 14 insurance companies, and all micro-finance institutions and SACCOs.

“Really what we find here (in Rwanda) is a friendly environment, and we want to make the best out of it. That is why we want to interact with our clients and know exactly what they need from us, so that we can design partnership strategies that benefit them,” he noted.

Reimers added that with the rise of non-performing loans (NPLs) in many African countries, there is need for companies like TransUnion to devise ways to help some of the struggling financial institutions in the region.

“The reason why NPLs are going up is because we don’t necessarily assess the risk when we acquire the customer, and we are not managing the risk through that whole cycle. But we have very many ways we can help players in the finance area,” he said.

The firm currently has presence in more than 30 emerging markets in Sub-Saharan Africa as well as in other developed markets across Europe, United States of America and Asia.

The New York Stock Exchange-listed company’s consolidated financial statement for 2017 indicates that revenue from emerging markets accounted for approximately 65 per cent of their international revenue.

According to Lee Naik, the Chief Executive Officer of TransUnion Africa, the company is moving to align its operations with technological trends through developing solutions that enhance the understanding of consumer behaviors.

“When we think of where the organisations are going, they are becoming intrinsically digital. This means the way we used to work traditionally will have to change. What we do as TransUnion is focusing on enabling things that allow us transact via mobile like mobile loan scorecard,” he said.

Naik added that they have deployed tools that enable them to use big data available in the digital world to start understand consumers and citizens better, so that they can enable the decisioning around credit.

By Julius Bizimungu