Designing your risk scoring

Risk Factors are the most important page in the Risk & KYC module. They decide how every customer is scored. Take time on this one — five minutes of thinking now saves you weeks of refining later.

How scoring works

Each factor has a set of options worth points. When a customer fills out their KYC, the system adds up the points they earn from their answers and turns the total into a percentage of the highest possible score.

Higher points = safer customer = lower risk band.

That percentage then maps to a risk band — Low, Medium, High, or Critical — via the bucket cutoffs you set on the Settings page (we cover those below).

Setting up a factor

Open Settings → Risk & KYC → Risk Factors. Two tabs again — Individual and Business — because individual and business customers are scored on separate factor sets.

Click + Add Factor. You'll get a full-page form with these fields:

• Factor Name — what this factor is called (e.g. “Housing type”, “Years in business”).
• Description — optional; helps you remember why this factor matters.
• Answer Type — Yes/No, Single choice, Multi-select, or Number.
• Who Fills This In — three choices, covered below.
• Required — tick if this factor must be filled in before approval.
• Bonus factor — a special flag, covered below.

Who fills this in

Three choices, and the difference matters:

• KYC form — the customer answers this themselves on the portal. Use this for things customers know about themselves (housing type, years at current address, employment).
• Approver — your team fills this in during review. Use this for things only your team can verify (reference call outcome, document authenticity).
• Auto-derived — the system fills it from existing data. Use this for things like “Repeat customer?” — yes if they've rented before.

Adding the options

For each factor, you add the answers and assign points.

For an individual factor called “Housing type”:

• “Owns house” — 20 points
• “Rented, long-term lease” — 10 points
• “Rented, short-term / PG” — 0 points

Higher points = safer. Aim for the top option to be worth roughly 15–25 points, and the bottom to be 0.

Bonus factors

A bonus factor is special: its points are added to the customer's score, but its maximum points don't count toward the highest possible score.

In practice this means a bonus factor can lift a customer into a safer band, but not having it doesn't penalise them. Use this for nice-to-have signals like “Verified reference provided” — earning extra points is great, but missing it shouldn't make a normal customer look risky.

Suggested starter factors for individuals

• Housing type (Single choice, KYC form) — Owns / Long-term rental / Short-term PG. Points: 20 / 10 / 0.
• Years at current address (Number ranges, KYC form) — 5+ years = 15 pts. 2–4 years = 8 pts. 0–1 years = 0 pts.
• Employment (Single choice, Approver-filled) — Salaried / Self-employed / Freelance / Student or unemployed. Points: 20 / 12 / 5 / 0.
• Verified reference provided (Yes/No, Approver-filled, Bonus) — Yes = 10 pts.

Suggested starter factors for businesses

• Years in operation (Number, KYC form) — 10+ years = 25 pts. 5–9 = 18 pts. 2–4 = 10 pts. 0–1 = 0 pts.
• Office type (Single choice, KYC form) — Owned premises = 15 pts. Long-term lease = 10 pts. Short-term lease or co-working = 3 pts. No fixed office = 0.
• Documents verified by 3rd party (Yes/No, Approver-filled) — GST/PAN/CoI verified through NSDL/MCA. Yes = 20 pts. No = 0 pts.
• Repeat customer (Yes/No, Auto-derived, Bonus) — Yes = 8 pts.

Calibrating the score

After you've added a few factors, look at the maximum score for each customer type. If your individual factors total 55 points and your business factors total 60, you have enough signal. If they total less than 40, add another factor or two.

Risk bucket cutoffs

Now that you know how points add up, you need to decide what percentage maps to which risk band. This lives on the Settings page (back at the top of the Risk & KYC section), under Review & Approval.

The defaults are:

• Low risk — 75% and above (safest)
• Medium risk — between 50% and 74%
• High risk — between 25% and 49%
• Critical risk — below 25%

If your business deals with cheap rentals where occasional losses don't hurt much, raise the bars — set Low to 85%. If you do high-value AV / IT equipment, the defaults are reasonable.

Start with the defaults. Tighten later if too many risky customers slip through. Click Save; the cutoffs need to be in order (Low > Medium > High) or the page will warn you.

Reviewing your scoring after launch

After your first 10 KYC submissions, look back at how the system scored them and compare to your gut. If a customer you'd trust scored Medium, your factor points are too harsh on something they do. If a customer you'd turn away scored Low, you're missing a factor or your points are too generous. Adjust and move on.

Next step

Risk Factors are the heart of the module. With those in place, head to Configuring approver fields — the custom notes and checkboxes your reviewers fill in.