TransUnion Philippines and Mastercard have announced a collaboration, following a successful pilot programme, to provide financial institutions in the Philippines with a broader view of consumer financial behaviour by combining credit data with aggregated transaction intelligence.
TransUnion Philippines, one of the country's first private comprehensive credit reference agencies, contributes credit, identity, and alternative data insights. Mastercard complements this with aggregated behavioural signals derived from spending activity indicators. Together, the combined data set is intended to support stronger lending decisions, improve customer engagement for financial institutions, and extend credit access to consumers who are difficult to assess through traditional data sources alone.
Addressing thin-file and new-to-credit consumers
A central objective of the collaboration is improving credit assessment for new-to-credit consumers, those with no credit history, and thin-file consumers, who have minimal records. These groups are frequently excluded from or disadvantaged within standard lending processes due to insufficient data for confident decisioning. By supplementing traditional credit information with spending behaviour signals, lenders can gain a more complete picture of a consumer's financial capacity and risk profile.
When it comes to financial institutions, the enriched data view is designed to reduce complexity in the application review process, help distinguish between applicants with similar credit profiles, identify emerging portfolio opportunities, and support more targeted product alignment based on demonstrated financial behaviour. Mastercard's consulting services have also worked with TransUnion to develop data propositions covering portfolio margin optimisation and collections strategies.
Furthermore, the collaboration supports broader financial inclusion objectives in the Philippines, where a significant proportion of the adult population remains underserved by formal credit markets.
Commenting on the news, Peter Faulhaber, President and CEO of TransUnion Philippines, said the partnership enriches existing insights with behavioural data to help institutions make more confident decisions while enabling more Filipinos with limited credit histories to access fair and relevant financial services. Further expanding on this, Jason Crasto, Country Manager for Mastercard in the Philippines, noted that the combined intelligence enables lenders to design responsibly, grow sustainably, and extend credit to historically underserved populations.
