Simulators For Equifax's Credit Scoring Service?

Q: A company testing a financial application has asked me if I know of any simulators for Equifax's credit scoring service. They have access to Equifax's test system but the act of making a credit scoring request can change subsequent credit scores which is messing up their test plan. So they've been looking for something which will mimic an Equifax transaction and return a static score from a database or similar. The only candidate so far is vSIM/MITS.comm which is a more generic programmable (and learning) simulator for network communications. This would probably do the job but seems a bit overcomplex for what's required. So I was wondering if anybody knew of a simpler tool that might do the job or could advise how this kind of issue is normally dealt with.

A: -In my experience of working with this CRA and the other big one I would like to offer one of the following options: One option could be to ask Equifax to supply you with a known set of test data that equates to one of your scenarios. This requires some work on your part - but at least you have a recourse if the testing returns an unexpected result! Another possible alternative is to partition the test data - at the Equifax end - and ask them to "rollback" the data after a certain number of tests or length of time has been completed. Another alternative (one which I recently carried out) was to use "live applications" that had been recently scored and then apply them to the test database. I understand all about the implication of the D.P.

A: and PCI regulations but if the testing is carried out in a strictly controlled environment - then the risks can be managed. I certainly don't advocate this approach but it was really our only option given project demands and the lack of time to create a stub! Another way to think about this problem is this. Considering you are interfacing with Equifax I would hazard a guess that you are not perfoming the credit scoring yourself (ie you have no credit scorecard on your application) - and would assume that you are interested in the decision + credit score returned - which could then possibly be applied to a policy rule based decision matrix. If this were true then you could create a stub - all you need to know is the datablock received from Equifax and you could manually crank this with the results you require based on the requests you sent.

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