Working Paper 173

Title
Creditworthiness and the Consumer Perspective: on credit scoring in Israel

Author
Hadas Weiss

Department
Department 'Resilience and Transformation in Eurasia'

Year of publication
2016

Number of pages
11

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Working Paper 173

Abstract
A bill to institute a centralised consumer credit scoring system in Israel has recently been approved and is now in the implementation phase. In this paper, I present and analyse the public debate surrounding the bill and its reflection in scholarly approaches to analogous phenomena. I argue that the attitudes it represents underemphasise the structural exigencies of global capitalism in its current, financialised mode. Focusing on the system’s winners and losers while neglecting a consideration of the limitations imposed on all financial agents, the bill’s proponents and opponents both end up promoting a consumer agenda. From this perspective, they pay tribute to an ideal of creditworthiness and financial inclusion as enfranchisement or empowerment – and ideal I scrutinise and critique.