The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mechanism how the platform obtains and uses undisclosed information to determine individual borrowers’ credit score and to examine the effectiveness of credit scoring in predicting default. The motivation stems from the fact that there is little evidence about the role of P2P platform, which has been positioned as a kind of information intermediary.,Using a sample of 5,176 unsecured P2P loans having expired before December 31, 2015 on Renrendai.com and an approach of two-stage regression, the paper first estimates the undisclosed information embedded in credit score by regressing credit score on four types of public information about a borrower’s creditworthiness. Then, the authors use a Logit regression to examine the role of the excess information in predicting the default probability.,The certification information provided by the platform is the most important determinant for a borrower’s credit score and the undisclosed information embedded in credit score can predict the loan performance better than the public information of posted listings. Moreover, the predictive ability of the undisclosed information is better for high-risk borrowers than for low-risk ones.,Providing a credit score for each individual is a way for P2P platforms to play an information intermediary role. More evidence about whether or how a platform plays its role are worthy to be exploited by investigating a platform’s operating policies in detail and doing cross-platform comparative studies.,The results about the effect of various types of information on loan performance can provide an insightful guidance for P2P platforms to optimize their mechanism on information disclosure and credit scoring.,The existing literature mainly focuses on the effects of information voluntarily disclosed by borrowers and the behaviors of investors on P2P lending outcomes. The paper highlights the information intermediary role played by the platform and presents empirical evidence that credit scoring for individual borrowers is a way for P2P platforms to promote the direct lending for individual.

中文翻译：

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P2P借贷平台信用评分的机制与有效性

本文的目的是研究平台如何获取和使用未公开信息来确定个人借款人的信用评分的机制，并检验信用评分在预测违约中的有效性。动机是基于以下事实：关于P2P平台被定位为一种信息中介的角色的证据很少。使用2015年12月31日之前到期的5,176笔无抵押P2P贷款样本，在Renrendai.com和作为一种两阶段回归的方法，本文首先通过对关于借款人信用度的四种公共信息进行信用评分回归来估计信用评分中嵌入的未公开信息。然后，作者使用Logit回归检查多余信息在预测默认概率中的作用。该平台提供的认证信息是借款人信用评分的最重要决定因素，信用评分中嵌入的未公开信息可以比已发布列表的公开信息更好地预测贷款表现。此外，对于高风险借款人而言，未披露信息的预测能力要好于低风险借款人。为每个人提供信用评分是P2P平台扮演信息中介角色的一种方式。通过详细研究平台的运营政策并进行跨平台比较研究，可以利用更多有关平台是否发挥作用或如何发挥作用的证据。各类信息对贷款绩效的影响结果可为P2P平台优化信息披露和信用评分机制提供有益的指导。现有文献主要集中在借款人自愿披露信息的影响及其行为上。对P2P贷款结果的投资者。本文重点介绍了平台扮演的信息中介角色，并提供了经验证据，即个人借款人的信用评分是P2P平台促进个人直接贷款的一种方式。