You know, often people think of the Nordics as a long way away from Africa, but this is something that we've really worked hard on

sharing that knowledge across markets in East Africa, you know, first-movers on mobile wallets, but then we've got in West Africa

the use of the utility data, but also although many of the variables are quite similar, you know, it's very important to look at the nuances of the data in that context.

The very first episodes of Heart-Align Money to Strangers were published exactly one year ago today, and so to mark the occasion, he has a bonus episode.

Iceland is home to just 371,000 hardy souls. If so small in fact that when you google it from the UK, the first results are all for the local grocery store chain.

That's a little unfair because they only have a population of 30,000 employees, but I digress.

The point is, Iceland is not a market we would quickly think of if we were to go looking for the next David to take on one of the financial industries of various calythe's.

But then again, the immense football team did surprise the world by making it all the way to the quarterfinals of the Euros in 2016, beating England along the way, which I mentioned only for reasons of historical accuracy, of course.

Nevertheless, I probably shouldn't be that surprised then that credit info than our 25 year old credit bureau headquartered in Reykjavik is making such big waves in the industry.

Welcome to how to lend money to strangers with Brendan Lagrange as I chat to Paul Randall CEO of credit info about disrupting the credit bureau industry and leveraging data and tech to facilitate access to credit.

Paul Randall, welcome to the show. Your CEO at credit info and I'm delighted to be talking to you today because actually credit info is a company I tried to get on very early in the show's life.

I used to work for Burak as you know and you know I had your global markets as I understand it but either the contact details I had for import old or he was avoiding me but nevertheless great to have you on.

I think what really intrigues me about the credit info story is that credit info seems to be a rare disruptor in the credit bureau industry.

This is an industry that has actually enabled a lot of the innovation we hear about in lending over the last decade or two but the industry itself is still really concentrated in the three big names that have been there forever but before we get into that let's take a moment just to talk about your own background because before you joined an ambitious little credit bureau based out of Iceland no less you were really well established in a traditional credit withdrawal with one of those big three credit bureaus having.

Work for some big name banking brands yeah thanks for having me on the show and really excited to talk about credit info and a little bit of my background I started off actually as a young graduate and got into credit with mail order first and I think that's always shaped my mind in terms of seeing credit as a facilitator for buying goods and means to an end rather than an end itself and also the way that it's much more dynamic when you're talking about small values.

And so I think always that side of credit away from just banking was always in my mind and also seeing credit as a dynamic industry not something that is relatively slow with established banks during my career I'd work for Scorex who was similar to to credit info cross multiple countries expanding geographically and providing really quite niche consultancy after that was acquired by experience I think the structure an organization of how to deliver the consultancy change.

Change me and many of my colleagues from having an in-depth knowledge about credit to having that knowledge together with the way to communicate it to different levels and having got those skills and also had a fantastic time with experienced transforming some of the South Korean banks after the crisis I think when I was approached with the opportunity to join credit info and saw the possibilities and the diversity of what was happening together with perhaps

the yearning to be involved in terms of I guess some some level of ownership and managing a specific unit which I started with the digital analytics that was really the motivator that drove me forward.

Okay, so yeah, the move from the biggest name in the industry to one of the small startups was an astrumatic as it maybe seems from the outside you really had that experience in the more entrepreneurial side of credit and the more dynamic side of the industry.

So you made that decision to move to to credit info and it seems like a fantastic choice to have made all of 15 years ago in that time credit info is grown from strength to strength and your careers obviously progressed significantly within the organization.

What has it been like for the 15 years? Well, since you made that decision to make the big move.

I think to be very frank, I think some of the early days were quite challenging because whereas I expected to be going into an organically grown organization which I'd been in previously if we reference score X initially a lot of the growth of credit info was through acquisition and it wasn't until Rayna won a fantastic opportunity in Kazakhstan to deliver the consumer bureau beating experience against all the odds that the company started to change to focus more on the market.

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