Welcome to the new BIIA Website. To provide our members and readers with a wealth of data about our industry we have brought over content and BIIA Newsletters from the old website which may show a recent posting date. The origin of the content and its original date of publishing are identified at the end of each post. Moving forward all posting dates and publishing dates are synonymous.
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) plans to initiate federal supervision for collection agencies after receiving a massive number of complaints about their practices. About 175 debt collection agencies that hold more than $10 million in annual collection receipts each, and account for more than 63 percent of the industry, would be subject to government oversight.
Source: Globalbankingrates.com
Acxiom® Corporation (Nasdaq: ACXM), announced the closing of the sale of its background screening business, Acxiom Information Security Services (AISS), to Sterling Infosystems for approximately $74 million.
Sterling Infosystems, Inc. (www.sterlinginfosystems.com) founded in 1975, is the leading background screening company in the world with an international presence known for industry leading turn-around-time, customer service and expertise in customizing solutions for industry specific needs. Most recently, Sterling became the only global background screening company in 2011’s Inc 5000. Sterling offers a broad range of services, including student screening services, corporate due diligence and background investigation services, occupational health services, and employment-related business tax consulting in the United States and in 200 countries around the world.
Source: Acxiom Press Release
During the last quarter of 2011 BIIA tracked 57 deals. 44% involved Analytics, Platforms, Software, Workflow Tools and Consultative Services.
During the first 50 days of 2012 there were already 57 deals announced which are relevant to our industry:
BIIA expects this trend to continue.
Fraudsters who obtain social housing from many different local authorities and housing associations now face detection under a new UK-wide data sharing initiative launched today by Experian Public Sector.
Experian Public Sector works with social housing providers to help prevent social housing tenancy fraud. To date, it has worked with over 30 separate providers and has detected potential fraud in six per cent of tenancies. Extrapolated up across the UK, this is equal to one in 16 social homes at a cost to tax payers of over £2 billion.
Source: Experian UK
In a perfect world, everyone would understand that sending user names, passwords and sensitive financial data via an unencrypted public network is a bad idea.
Free WiFi is now a given in many public spaces such as coffee shops, airports and hotel lobbies. Most people don’t think twice about quickly accessing an open network, even to check a bank balance or pay a bill. But appearances can be deceiving, and not all networks are legitimate. It is now common to have skilled fraudsters, or even casual hackers, set up dummy networks that ensnare unsuspecting patrons and capture sensitive information, such as banking passwords. Criminals sitting next to you, or in the parking lot 100’s of feet away, can intercept data—and there is no way to pick them out of a crowd.
To read the full story click on the link below
Source: FICO Banking Analytics Blog
The Pritzker family and Madison Dearborn are Selling TransUnion: After several years of trying the Pritzker Family finally made their exit from TransUnion. According to Bloomberg the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS)’s buyout unit and Advent International Corp. acquired TransUnion from Dearborn Partners and the Pritzker family. Dearborn Partners had acquired 51% equity in TransUnion from the Pritzker family in 2010. At that time the deal was valued at US$2bn. The deal with Goldman Sachs’ GS Capital Partners and Advent International, values Chicago-based TransUnion at more than $3 billion.
TransUnion’s 2011 revenues were $1.02 billion thus earning a 3x revenue multiple for the sellers. Bobby Mehta, the company’s chief executive officer, and the rest of the leadership team will remain with TransUnion.
“The conversion of cash to plastic is an unstoppable, global trend and several markets would be well served by a credit bureau like TransUnion,” said Philip J. Philliou of New York-based Philliou Partners, a consultant for the payment industry. “Global expansion has got to be part of Advent’s investment thesis.”
There is some truth to that as cash based countries such as India and China are under immense pressure to reduce the reliance on paper money because of counterfeiting and the cost of printing paper money. These are the potentially the largest markets for credit information, however there are country specific constraints. India limits foreign ownership in credit bureaus to 49%. TransUnion has a minority equity stake in CIBIL, the oldest of the four credit bureaus in India. China is currently off limits for private sector credit bureaus, perhaps this will change over time.
Geographic diversification is certainly a key for future growth. Second in line of importance are analytics and workflow tools. TransUnion has recently entered Brazil by acquiring Crivo SA, a leading decisioning and analytics firm. If the new owners provide TransUnion management with the latitude of making similar deals elsewhere it will most certainly bring new dynamics to the business of consumer credit information.
Source: Bloomberg News - Chicago Tribune - BIIA editorial comments
