Gov’t to tap 5 credit bureaus

STATE-RUN Credit Information Corp. (CIC) plans to accredit at least five credit bureaus by the end of the year as part of initiatives to generate more credit reports and boost data gathering.

CIC president and chief executive Jaime P. Garchitorena told reporters on Friday that he had met with eight applicants—five foreign-led and three local companies with foreign partners—to become accredited special accessing entities (SAEs).

Under the law, credit bureaus or SAEs are “duly-accredited private corporations engaged primarily in the business of providing credit reports, ratings and other similar credit information products and services,” the CIC had noted.

According to the CIC, credit bureaus “are deemed essential to the proposed credit information ecosystem as they create innovative value-added products and services, such as credit scoring and analytics.” Credit scoring or rating determines borrowers’ credit worthiness.

Garchitorena said the accreditation process would subject the eight applicants to stringent requirements.

“In terms of financial capability, they should have P60 million in paid-up capital and P120 million or so investment in technology,” he said.

The applicants were also required to submit a business plan for review by CIC in the next two months, Garchitorena said.

With credit bureaus expected to be in place by yearend, the CIC sees having a usable database by the end of next year, which would churn out credit scores on a regular basis starting January 2017, he said.

At present, only about 25 million records covering 40 percent of the total population of borrowers in the country are available, he said.

The CIC serves as a central credit registry, “collecting positive and negative credit data on borrowers and providing consolidated basic credit information to individuals, businesses, financial institutions, private credit bureaus, and other entities afforded the right to access the same.