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We’ve seen a couple of efforts to introduce quick and easy banking services in developing nations. Now addressing the topic of credit-worthiness, Cignifi aims to help banks meet the needs of the 2.7 billion such people worldwide by offering credit and marketing scores for consumers using just mobile phone behavior data. Developed with the help of behavioral mathematicians to assess credit risk using as little as four weeks calling history, Cignifi’s new platform offers what it claims is the first to deliver credit and marketing scores for consumers without credit histories using mobile phone behavior data. Specifically, the Massachusetts-based company’s patent-pending analytics platform uses mathematical behavior models to turn billions of raw mobile phone calls, messages, and payments into various consumer scores, including risk scores rating the likelihood of default or delinquency and response scores rating the likelihood that a consumer will use a particular financial product. Scores are created “from a combination of behavioral and time-related attributes, but do not rely on any location data or content information from voice calls or texts,” notes Cignifi, which stresses that mobile users’ privacy remains protected as data is not linked to specific individuals unless they request a quote. There’s a big world of financially underserved consumers out there; all that’s been missing is a way to assess and then serve them accordingly. Financial-minded entrepreneurs: Time to get involved? Spotted by: Paulo Almeida