Loans are the backbone of healthy societies, helping individuals and businesses realise ambitions that drive economic growth and innovation.
Left uncontrolled, however, borrowing can tip into bankruptcies, reduced spending power and rising financial crime. In Norway, IT services group Tieto has been at the centre of an effort to rebalance that equation, combining registry, transaction and debt collection data to sharpen credit decisions and clamp down on fraud.
That tension was the focus of the latest episode of the Data Insiders podcast, where host Oona Ylänkö spoke with three Norwegian data and lending specialists about how Tieto and its partners are using data to sharpen credit decisions and clamp down on fraud.
Using Norway as a case study, the panel discussed how data solutions are helping prevent risky loans while making it easier to assess creditworthiness in cases that would once have been difficult to call. It is a fitting testbed: Norway is among the most digitally advanced societies in the world, yet also carries the highest debt-to-income ratio of any OECD country.
The story begins in 2017, when Norwegian household debt started outpacing income growth. In response, private companies were allowed to support financial institutions in building better risk evaluation tools.
Tieto used the opening to establish the Norwegian Debt Registry, known locally as Gjeldsregisteret AS, pooling unsecured consumer debt data, including credit cards and consumer loans, from every financial institution in the country.
Speaking on the podcast, Gjeldsregisteret AS CEO Egil Årrestad said, “Banks are able to make better decisions with the credit evaluations and report fewer problems than before. And most importantly, the private consumers’ debt issues have decreased.”
Building on that foundation, Tieto Indtech partnered with Nordic FinTech Bislab, founded in 2022, to develop a risk assessment tool drawing on Norwegian registries, debt collectors and transaction histories. The tool has posted a ROC score above 90%, a key measure of predictive reliability.
Bislab chief product officer Marcus Bergquist told the podcast, “It’s the most precise model in the market and additionally, we have created both industry and company-specific models that take this even further because they’re tailor-made for our customers.”
Arnesen sees the Tieto Indtech and Bislab partnership as evidence of a market opening up after years of little change. Pairing a large, established data provider with a nimble fintech challenger would once have been unusual in this sector, but Arnesen argues it has become a template for progress.
Arnesen added, “This is a field that has been stagnant for a very long time, with just a few big players competing in the market. Fostering innovation has been a high priority for us in our work together.”
Arnesen argues the shift benefits borrowers previously locked out of credit as much as lenders. Tieto Indtech head of data services Gry Arnesen said, “For businesses providing loans, this naturally also presents an economic upside: more loans and higher income linked to borrowers with repayment ability, as well as reduced losses in the portfolio. And from a societal standpoint, improved credit scoring models also help drive economic growth.”
On concerns over algorithmic bias, Bislab chief product officer Marcus Bergquist said, “Automated loan decisions are likely to be less biased than a caseworker sitting behind a desk. Improving the objective performance of our data models will, over time, reduce bias rather than increase it.”
One gap remains: Norwegian police still lack access to debt registry data, limiting financial crime investigations even as preventive tools improve.
For more, read the full story here.
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