While this magazine usually stays focused firmly within the bubble of the UK automotive business, it’s important to keep in mind that interesting ideas can come from anywhere in the world. I was reminded of this when Fred threw me an interesting read from The Economist this month.

Across Africa there are 1,200 people employed to judge the credit risk of a loan applicant by what material possessions they can see when visiting the applicant’s home, including an indoor lavatory (which is a plus-sign, apparently).

The idea has now spread to monitoring mobile (not landline) phone usage of applicants, with regular calls to wealthier nations or nearby commercial areas being a boon to a credit application.

The next phase of intrusively personal styles of underwriting is referring to the internet. Neo, an American start-up, assesses the credit risk of those after private car finance by looking, with permission, at an applicant’s LinkedIn profile to gauge their CV and, therefore, likely chances of job retention.

From here, ZestFinance, a US lender, is applying analytical tools to Facebook, looking for telltale signs of personal malfeasance such as writing in all lower- or upper-case or posting anti-social updates, from which, the company predicts, it may soon be able to predict credit risk.

If all this appears Orwellian, that’s because it is. Only this time, it is corporations, not the state, prying into our lives, with our consent, not to judge our behaviour but our finances, through the prism of behaviour.

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Which is not to say any of this is wrong. Indeed, anything that increases personal responsibility online should be welcome. If permission is given, let customers be judged by their social media behaviour, which is not the same as private behaviour, as readily as we hand over payslips and tax records today.

What matters more will be the safeguards placed on the companies which gather this information. As you will read, I recently sat down with Alistair Scullion, managing director of Experian Automotive, during which he explained the thoroughness with which the company protects its records. As Scullion put it: "This company is built on our integrity of being a data custodian."

Also, a quick word regarding the acquisition of Cobbetts and the finance litigation team of Chafes by DWF. As regular readers will know, John Perez and Julia Williams from Chafes, Roger Potgeiter at Cobbetts, and many partners and employees of DWF have been regular contributors to the legal comment section of Motor Finance. We wish them all the very best with the moves.

richard.brown@timetric.com