By A Staff Reporter
Kathmandu, Feb. 2: Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding on psychometric scoring solution with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a subsidiary of the World Bank Group.
It said that the MoU will help in generating credit scores on the basis of individual’s capacity, behaviour, style and qualification, rather than the credit history.

It is expected that the psychometric scoring will help to make the financial system more technology-friendly, simple and promote riskless credit mobilisation, the NRB said in a statement on Tuesday.
Executive Director of the Microfinance Institution Supervision Department, Suman Kumar, and Residential Representative of IFC in Nepal, Babacar Sedikh Faye, signed the MoU in the presence of Governor of the NRB, Maha Prasad Adhikari.

This innovative method is being implemented for two years as an experiment in Nepal with the support from Japan and the United Kingdom.
It will be applied in the microfinance sector to bring the persons obtaining micro and retail loan, or micro, small and medium enterprises under the scope of formal financial services.

The central bank expressed hope that the new method will help in extending the financial services to the people currently out of financial access.
“We expect that this method will make the micro-credit management technology-friendly,” said Governor Adhikari.