Zopa is an online marketplace where people can lend and borrow money directly to and from one another at a good rate of return and at low risk.

SAS has played a major role in Zopa's uniquely low bad-debt rate and, in consequence, the excellent returns it delivers to lenders. By using SAS, Zopa has achieved an incredibly low bad debt rate of <0.05% of money lent in comparison to the market average of 3.45%, making it a much more secure option for personal lenders. Using SAS' credit scoring software, Zopa is able to accurately credit score all its borrowers, minimising risk to its business and its customer base.

From the outset, Zopa needed to be able to accurately credit score all borrowers, with the aim of minimising bad debt on their unsecured loans. Accurate credit scoring and a low bad debt rate would lift lender confidence, encouraging them to go through Zopa over traditional banking routes. Zopa also required analytical applications which could efficiently qualify and match lenders to suitable borrowers.

To meet Zopa's requirements, any credit scoring solution had to be fast, robust and scalable. Zopa chose SAS' credit scoring software, which includes credit checking and authentication, because it met all the aforementioned criteria and stood out as the clear leader in the field. Using SAS, Zopa is now able to accurately score each individual borrower and then place them into one of four credit categories, each with a SAS created profile attached. SAS' software then enables Zopa to match lenders to borrowers based on a correlating risk/ROI profile.

Karen Wilshere, Risk Director at Zopa says: "Accurate credit scoring was absolutely business critical to the entire project. We needed to demonstrate to the financial media and to potential lenders, that we are extremely careful with lenders' money, keeping bad debt close to zero. We also need to be fully transparent to the regulators and reporting from SAS provides the information for the tight controtrols that Zopa requires to comply with regulations and look after lenders' money".

Tim Parlett, Zopa's Chief Technology Officer adds: "SAS software is mission-critical because we use it to score every single applicant. It does exactly what you want it to do and we know it is the leader in this field, that's why it was the obvious choice."

Following the success Zopa has achieved through using SAS' software, coupled with SAS' flexibility and scalability, it now plans to use SAS to expand the business rapidly both in the UK and overseas markets in the near future.