TransUnion named its newest suite of solutions Prama, which in Sanskrit means the source for accurate and valid knowledge about the world.

No matter if they speak English, Spanish, French or even Sanskrit, TransUnion’s Steve Chaouki insisted that finance company executives — especially ones that delve deep into the subprime space — will be able to comprehend the data and insights Prama can deliver through a cloud-based solution portable enough to be taken into the board room, the underwriting department or even a gathering with state and federal regulators.

“That’s really what Prama is,” said Chaouki, who is executive vice president of TransUnion's financial services business unit. “We’re trying to build it up as a knowledge and delivery hub. It’s a place where our customers can go to tap into knowledge and information and work with that knowledge and information to further their understanding of their business and act on their business.”

The Prama portfolio will start with two flagship solutions in 2016 — Prama Insights and Prama Studio.

TransUnion explained Prama Insights includes anonymized information on virtually every credit active consumer in the U.S. The data set leverages the power of CreditVision and a seven-year historical view of data, providing finance companies with what TransUnion calls “dynamic” insights that can translate into “clear” benefits at every touchpoint.

During a conversation with SubPrime Auto Finance News in advance of Thursday’s initial launch, Chaouki explained why players in the subprime space are often “heavy” users of analytics.

“They want the resources and capabilities of Prama but don’t want to build it all out themselves. Now it will be all available to them in a turn-key kind of way,” he said.

Chaouki touched on why the release of Prama is so timely since “fear” is starting to bubble up in the industry as delinquencies are starting to rise. In fact earlier this week, Fitch Ratings discussed how analysts are seeing delinquencies and their impact at levels not spotted in almost 20 years.

“If I were a subprime auto lender, I would want to know how I stack up and look by different regions to understand my exposure so I can manage it,” Chaouki said. “What Prama will allow you to do is to go into specific states, look at your risk ranges, the kind of loans you’re underwriting by score and dig into that.

“Then you can see how your loans are performing versus the other loans in that space within that state by vintage,” he continued. “How are the loans you made last month doing versus those from a month before and going back in time up to 84 months? You can look at the trends of how your originations are flowing. You can look at it by region and compare it to the benchmarks and begin to understand if you have something to worry about or if your portfolio is holding up well.”

“It’s a really timely for subprime lenders as we’re talking about these things,” Chaouki went on to say. “You can dig in and ask if there’s a problem in the oil states — North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas. You can drill into those states and look at how your vintages are performing versus other states. You can begin to segment your population and understand your risk.

“Then as you engage with your regulators, with your board, as you think about your strategy, you can begin to inform them based on how you’re performing relative to the market and relative to your own expectations,” he added.

What’s going to be available soon

The first two modules of Prama Insights are Vintage Analysis and Market Insights.

The Vintage Analysis module leverages TransUnion’s detailed anonymized tradeline history of more than 200 million consumers, allowing users to view seven years of performance data on a cohort basis so they can:

— Monitor underwriting policy: View delinquency trends across various timeframes and origination cohorts, which can help risk managers adjust application scorecards and underwriting strategy to acquire accounts of acceptable risk.

— Forecast losses: Use vintage curves to project charge-offs and estimate loan loss reserves; this is valuable in general business as well as when engaging with regulators or investors.

— Calculate loan profitability: Leverage vintage performance insights to help calculate loan profitability by risk tier, determine the most appropriate credit terms and determine pricing strategy.

— Define marketing strategy: Influence market segmentation, acquisition channel definition and more via vintage performance analysis.

The Market Insights module can provide quarterly views of key lending metrics at a state, regional and national level — enabling customers to access relevant benchmark trends in seconds.

The module includes nine quarters of anonymized data and a more granular understanding of delinquency rate changes by credit tier, geography, line of business and product. Customers using this information can better measure their own performance against their competition in the industry.

“Prama Insights allows lenders to gain real and timely market intelligence that can be used for a wide variety of purposes, such as adapting risk and product strategies,” Chaouki said in TransUnion's release about the suite. “Studio, the second phase of Prama, will allow users to upload their own data, conduct detailed analyses and test strategy changes across a number of dimensions.

“The next phases of Prama will actually allow customers to seamlessly execute new strategies, or changes to existing strategies, in an automated manner that minimizes manual intervention,” he continued. “In short, Prama will fundamentally change the way lenders develop and deploy their strategies, with enormous benefits for them and their customers alike.”

The first Prama Studio modules will be offered to TransUnion customers in mid-2016.

“The tool is only possible because we have spent a better part of three years now upgrading the entire systems of TransUnion,” Chaouki told SubPrime Auto Finance News. “It’s a huge investment for us in bringing our systems up to the most modern systems available at this time. … It’s one of the largest databases that’s out there at this point.

“One of the things we really wanted to do with this software is make it user friendly and easy to integrate,” he went on to say. “You don’t want to create something like this and have it be a huge technological job to allow the customers to access it. We built it as a portal for the customers to come in and engage with TransUnion. The modules are all sitting on the portal and they can select what they want to use and engage with it.”

A video further highlighting Prama can be seen at the top of this page.