Register for our webinar: Responsible lending in a lockdown

As financial pressures impact many households, Equifax and AccountScore will discuss and define how lenders can deploy new strategies to lend responsibly, in an environment that’s new to everyone. The panel will discuss challenges and practical solutions for assessing affordability, such as:

• New and existing borrowing – how to assess creditworthiness when it’s in flux;
• FCA expectations for firms to engage sympathetically with customers;
• How lenders and credit reference agencies are responding to immediate challenges;
• Making creditworthiness and affordability assessments in a lockdown – what assumptions now need to be reviewed?

With many households facing temporary shocks in income, and estimates published yesterday by the Office for Budget Responsibility showing unemployment could rise two million in the next three months, Equifax will detail how lenders can factor fluid financial circumstances into decisions.

Equifax’s experts will also showcase how holistic and up-to-date financial data can be obtained and what signals can be extracted from the data, to deploy in decisions.

As Open Banking could play a vital role for lenders, as they seek the most accurate real time data on customers, Equifax will also explore how Open Banking data compares with CRA data.

Vulnerability – is everyone vulnerable now?
In an environment where many more customers are prone to becoming vulnerable, both in terms of their health and finances, Equifax will present the tools available to lenders to be more diligent than ever to vulnerability indicators at the point of sale, and existing borrowing.

The webinar presenters will be Dan Weaver, head of innovation at Equifax, and Emma Steeley, chief executive at AccountScore, along with Marcel Le Gouais, managing editor at Credit Strategy, as host.

Readers can register here for the webinar which will be broadcast live on Wednesday April 29 at 12noon. Can’t listen in on April 29? Registering enables you to listen to the webinar on demand and view the presentation slides.