There is a wide gap between the average loan of male and female borrowers, according to the Credit Information Corp. (CIC).

CIC President and CEO Jaime Casto Jose P. Garchitorena said in a statement last Monday that the central credit registry records show that the average loan for females is P605,000 while the average loan for males is P1.1 million.

“That’s interesting and we’d have to verify that,” Garchitorena said.

Still, preliminary figures show that access to credit is “almost equal” for both genders, CIC said, with females at 59 percent and males at 41 percent.

“From the initial drawing of data, the best lenders in terms of number of female borrowers versus number of male borrowers seem to be microfinance with number of loans favoring women with 87 percent, with male borrowers showing 13 percent,” Garchitorena added.

While these are still raw data, Garchitorena said these can be used as a source of statistical and behavioral data that can help establish relevant policies to further ease women’s access to credit.

He said that the CIC is committed to validating the numbers to determine whether the gender differences in credit use may be tagged as a policy, accessibility, opportunity or educational concern.

“[If] the discussion point is equality versus equitability, that’s the kind of narrative [the] CIC data can validate,” the CIC chief said.

Meanwhile, Garchitorena earlier warned the public against the malicious use of CIC’s name by lenders.

He said that there were complaints from borrowers allegedly harassed by lenders, threatening them to report their defaults to the CIC. In addition, these said debt collectors also warned the borrowers they would then be put in a negative list and be blacklisted by other financial firms.

Garchitorena assured that such a list does not exist in the first place.

“First, the CIC does not have any access to or keep any negative or blacklist of delinquent clients, nor investigate the status of the borrowers. Also, the CIC will never be part of any direct collection activities,” he explained.

As of end-August, its database onboards 18.2 million individuals or nearly 26 percent of the country’s adult population.

CIC said the credit database comprises 80.4 million contracts, 58.9 million of which are installment transactions.

The central credit registry has 519 submitting entities coming from different sectors of the financial system. -- Tyrone Jasper C. Piad

Source: BusinessMirror