Consumer Action, together with co-authors from Deakin University, has released “Profiling for Profit: A Report on Target Marketing and Profiling Practices in the Credit Industry”. Featured in The Sunday Age, this report explains how many businesses make significant investments to purchase or develop customer relationship management systems. These systems use cutting-edge technology to help businesses mine and use customer data.
The report finds that there is limited public information about these systems, but does provide some indication about their extent, purpose and their use.
Consumer Action believes that recognising that lenders use customer information, and highly sophisticated systems, to target their market strategies, is an important first step towards ensuring that these practices are taken into account in the development of consumer policy and law reform. The report considers the potential impact on consumers:
[T]he increased use of customer information by businesses has coincided with an explosion in the levels of consumer debt. Over the last twenty years, unsecured credit card debt in Australia has increased dramatically by 12 times to a total of almost $50 billion. Even more concerning is that over 70 per cent of this, or $36 billion, is accruing interest.
While the risk of a borrower defaulting, at least in the short to medium term, is a key consideration for lenders, financial counsellors and community lawyers believe that many more consumers who don’t actually default are caught in long-term debt, struggle to make payments or are ‘trapped’ into credit products which are profitable for the lender but inappropriate for the borrower.
This report explains how business is using personal information to identify not only individuals’ needs, but also their vulnerabilities.
For example, banks and credit providers are able to profile, segment and use CRM technology to better target credit card offers to those who don’t pay back their full balance within the interest-free period. Known as ‘revolvers’, such credit card users are highly profitable compared to ‘transactors’ or ‘convenience users’, who generally do not incur interest on purchases. Similarly, particular mortgage borrowers can be encouraged to redraw additional funds, or to otherwise refinance or increase the amount of their mortgage.
The competitive need of corporations to increase their profitability and return to shareholders unsurprisingly drives them to use personal information and new technologies for their ends, rather than to help consumers access the most appropriate products for their needs.