Page 209 - ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services – Technology, innovation and competition

ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services
Technology, Innovation and Competition

and used as a basis for developing an alternate credit score, or affecting current credit bureau scoring data.
These privacy concerns have garnered the attention of some regulators. 193

10.2 Competition aspects

Entities who may be in a position to accumulate data used to create alternative credit scores may potentially
use the data to their own advantage by not providing the complete data sets as required to credit bureaus,
and/or selectively providing the data only to preferred parties. Entities with SMP may be able to utilize their
internal data to the potential detriment of smaller players.

10.3 Country example

Kenya

The Competition Authority of Kenya in 2016 began a study to ‘authenticate reports’ on whether provider’s
‘mobile credit data’ and other entities deliberately released information on bad borrowers while concealing
information on good borrowers. In particular, the study will assesses:
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‘The level of equal compliance with Credit Bureau reporting by digital credit providers and if they report both
positive and negative borrower data as required by law and if there exists disparate treatments that gives them
anti-competitive advantage and inhibits consumers’ ability to take advantage of their own data for financial
access.’ 195
The enquiry was apparently prompted by ‘good’ borrower’s accessing loan while ‘bad’ borrowers were denied
access to loans in other financial institutions since they lack access to any past credit information. The CAK
196
study also looks at current practices around consumer control over their transactional data and how this is sold
or accessed by third parties such as the usage of mobile credit data to score and award credit offers without
consumer consent.

193 See Government Of Kenya (2016) Gazette Notice No. 678: Proposed Market Inquiry And Sector Study On The Kenya Banking
Sector-Phase II By Competition Authority Of Kenya, available at https:// goo. gl/ wbqDX6
194 Daily Nation (2016) Govt Launches Study On Mobile Money Practices, available at https:// goo. gl/ h9OumW. This study is report-
edly ongoing as of January 2017.
195 Government Of Kenya (2016) ibid
196 The CAK indicated that the study will establish whether consumers have been denied information on their DFS activities that
could enable them get loans elsewhere in so far as assessing if there exists restrictions on consumers’ use of their own digital
transactional data and provision of the same to third parties for commercial use. CAK communication to ITU TIC WG; and Daily
Nation (2016) ibid

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