[JayBallentine]

Taking investor meetings today. Met with one who has invested in a company that uses cell phone records to evaluate creditworthiness of potential borrowers. They company operates in Brazil but in talking with him about this business I couldn't help but to imagine funders requesting the last 3 months' cell phone bills / records. I imagine that a lot can be learned from them. How many times a guy is on the phone with his lawyer? Is he being sued? Has he all of a sudden stopped having calls with suppliers? Is he scaling down his business. How many times he's talking with business brokers? Is he planning to sell?

Is this the future of funding? 3 Months Statements + Cell Phone records? I kid, I kid. But fascinating stuff.

[funding pro]

Nope......

[JayBallentine]

Nope......

Concise answer to a rhetorical question.

[MCNetwork]

Even deadbeats will prioritize cell phone bills over all of their other bills. They need to be able to chat with family and friends. Cell phone records have minimal correlation to overall credit worthiness.

[JayBallentine]

Even deadbeats will prioritize cell phone bills over all of their other bills. They need to be able to chat with family and friends. Cell phone records have minimal correlation to overall credit worthiness.

I agree on some levels. Still trying to wrap my head around it. It's a home run or a strike out for those guys and nothing inb between.

Apparently it's a way for creditors to serve the underbanked in portions of Brazil. Clearly, not directly applicable to this space. But it gives you an idea of the myriad of ways to correlate what seem to be dis-connected data points / sources in mitigating risk.

[ERS]

Cell Phone Service is run slightly differently outside of the U.S. and especially in Central/South America. For one its not uncommon for it to cost $2.99 a minute and the average person doesnt necessarily have one. Landlines are still very much the norm. So when they check usage of a cell phone they may be looking at how responsibly minutes are being used versus whether or not the bill is paid, or both. Here we have unlimited cheap prepaid plans...they dont have that. So its quite possible that using that information is effective in mitigating risk in that economic habitat...but it would prove useless here.

[Carl C.]

I would guess that in a place like Brazil the cell phone bill might be a primary form of information on a prospect...not sure how things like property records, tax records, and some of the other stips might be gathered or if they even exist. As a means of risk management I can't imagine the company that has broken out their algorithm to the point that "called mistress 3x/day" would work as a metric. Perhaps it could be like the old 'stated income' mortgage: a business card, stapled to a bank statement, was basically all that was required.

[ADiamond]