Naver Pay announced on the 6th that it will introduce the 'Npay Score,' an alternative credit evaluation model, in collaboration with SGI Seoul Guarantee for its policy finance loan product, the Saitdole Loan.
This introduction marks the first case of applying an alternative credit evaluation model to a policy finance product supported by the government, and the Npay Score will be utilized positively in the credit evaluation of Saitdole Loan applicants, contributing to enhanced financial accessibility for more loan applicants than before. The Npay Score will be applied across all online and offline sales channels and loan comparison platforms of all financial institutions (banks, savings banks, and mutual finance) handling the Saitdole Loan starting from the 7th.
The Npay Score is an alternative credit evaluation model jointly developed by Npay and NICE Information Service, which combines existing financial (credit bureau) data with non-financial data such as Npay transaction history or smart store sales data. The two companies have combined 30,000 non-financial data items with 73 million de-identified records, making the scale of the utilized non-financial data among the highest in the industry.
Following SGI Seoul Guarantee's improvement of the Saitdole loan eligibility criteria from the bottom 30% to 50% in credit scores in April, leading to an increase in loan supply, the introduction of the Npay Score is expected to further enhance the expansion of inclusive finance in the Saitdole Loan through an increased loan approval rate for mid-to-low credit individuals.
In fact, currently among the financial companies partnered with the Npay credit loan comparison service, 16 companies are utilizing the Npay Score in their loan screening strategies, with an additional 17 companies planned to be gradually applied starting in the second half of the year, raising the total to 33 financial companies. The Npay Score will only be applied in a way that benefits loan applicants, and among the loan amounts executed by the financial companies applying the Npay Score in the Npay loan comparison service, the proportion of loans that were converted to approval or received better interest rates or limit conditions than before accounts for 32.1% of the total.
Jo Jae-bak, Vice President in charge of Npay's financial business at Inno.Biz, noted that "as this is the first case of applying an alternative credit evaluation model to policy finance, we plan to continuously refine the Npay Score to fulfill its role as a 'financial ladder' that includes more financially excluded groups." He added, "I hope that the Npay Score will be applied to more financial products, including the Saitdole Loan, contributing to the recovery of the livelihood economy."