Lenders turn to big data to know customers

San Francisco

WHEN bankers of the future decide whether to make a loan, they may look to see if potential customers use only capital letters when filling out forms, or at the amount of time they spend online reading terms and conditions - and not so much at credit history.

These signals about behaviour - picked up by sophisticated software that can scan thousands of bits of data about online and offline lives - are the focus of a handful of trailblazing startups that are creating new models of lending.