Overview

Over the years, Círculo de Crédito has become a driving force in improving people’s quality of life, enabling millions to access credit for the first time. This commitment to innovation and inclusion was recognized internationally when the company received the FICO Decisions Award in 2022. Today, it is consolidated as Mexico’s Credit Information Society of financial inclusion. At the core of its business model is the Extended Score, a unique scoring methodology that allows financial institutions to evaluate applicants with little or no credit history. With this model, Círculo de Crédito has generated scores for more than 20 million Mexicans, helping them gain access to credit opportunities while giving financial institutions the tools to lend more securely. After two decades of consistent growth and innovation, Círculo de Crédito now manages the credit information of more than 80 million Mexicans. Beyond data management, the company actively develops solutions that expand credit access across the country, strengthening both individuals and institutions.

Challenges

• No specialized tools to mitigate fraud: Users had few alternatives to perform manual fraud assessments, which represented a process limited by the knowledge of each user and product and/or limited by the number of analysts, as all assessments required at least one analyst for a certain time.
• All fraud prevention procedures were manual: Analysts could generate home visits, phone calls or requests for references, but in addition to the high costs involved, they could not verify the applicant’s intentions.
• A generic score was the only alternative: The other option presented was to request a generic score that meant the anaylsts would lose focus on its market (personal loans),

Why Círculo de Crédito chose Featurespace

A solution different from all our scoring systems

• Integrated machine-learning techniques
• Extensive experience in fraud detection
• At the forefront with attractive performances
• A combination of experience and results
• Adaptability to change

How Círculo de Crédito uses the Featurespace Platform

The Featurespace Platform was purposefully designed with a focus on first-person fraud, preserving its core objective: detecting patterns with a low presence rate in the total set of events.

Additionally, fraud has always been a behavior that changes continuously; it never stabilizes or becomes a set of static characteristics. This is because fraudsters look for new ways to exploit vulnerabilities in any process and attack them. And when these vulnerabilities are removed, the fraudster will look for the next open door to attack.

This is where Adaptive Behavioral Analytics helps us to identify the common attack patterns and continuously reviews and updates to identify new patterns that could be exploited and that were not previously known.

Results

• The Featurespace platform surpasses other scores: In terms of fraud detection, the Featurespace Platform surpasses other scores when applied to the value of fraud savings.


• The Featurespace Platform is sensitive to the amount of losses: The Featurespace platform shows a difference in fraud savings and delivers more accuracy in cases where the loss can potentially be larger. The results have an impact on fraud mitigation.
• 51% increase in fraud detection¹: Circulo de Credito have specific users who, when comparing a generic score and taking an equal cut-off point, had an increase in fraud detection of up to 51% compared to one decile of the population — this generated savings of more than one million pesos to increase the business’s profitability.
• 62% difference between lowest and highest scored fraud losses²: It was found that the levels of fraud detected is due to the accuracy and prioritization achieved by the Featurespace Platform, achieving a difference of up to 62% between fraud losses of the lowest scored applications and the highest scored fraud losses.