The Financial Services Commission and Korea Credit Information Services (Korea Credit Information Services) are pushing to include electricity usage in the Small Business Credit Bureau (SCB) model tailored to small business owners. The aim is to assess the business continuity of small business owners through electricity usage and reflect it in credit evaluations. Korea Credit Information Services is currently consulting with Korea Electric Power Corporation on related plans.
On the 9th, according to the financial industry, Korea Credit Information Services recently met with Korea Electric Power Corporation(015760) to discuss using electricity usage in SCB evaluations. The goal is to determine whether a small business owner's establishment is operating based on electricity usage, convert that into data, and reflect it in SCB evaluation criteria. Once consultations are concluded, small business owners whose daily establishment electricity usage is consistent will have a higher credit score than those whose usage is not.
The SCB being built by the Financial Services Commission (FSC) and Korea Credit Information Services is an AI-based credit evaluation system that assesses the future growth potential of small business owners using not only existing financial transaction histories but also nonfinancial information such as sales, industry, and commercial districts. Factors such as the duration of business continuity, number of workers, customer awareness and demand, and online distribution platforms' visit, revisit, and bookmark information are also used in the evaluation.
When Korea Credit Information Services calculates a small business owner's "growth grade (S grade)" based on this information, credit bureaus (CB companies) provide financial companies with a "growth credit grade" that combines the existing credit grade and the growth grade. Small business owners with a high growth grade can receive benefits such as loan approval, higher limits, and lower interest rates by being assigned a higher grade than in existing credit evaluations.
The Financial Services Commission (FSC) plans to conduct a pilot operation of the SCB through the second half of next year and then enable the banking sector to apply it to small business loan products. During the pilot period, Korea Credit Information Services is identifying various data that can be reflected in the SCB, and converting electricity usage into data is part of this effort. Korea Credit Information Services is currently collaborating with Naver to receive materials such as online repurchase rates for inclusion in the SCB, and is also in talks to receive related data from Coupang and Baemin.