MAKATI CITY, 11 October 2019 – The Credit Information Corporation (CIC) underscored anew the need for its submitting financial institutions — banks, quasi-banks, their subsidiaries and affiliates, life insurance companies, and other entities that provide credit facilities — to have at least six (6) consecutive months’ submission of basic credit data of their borrowers before they may qualify to access the Credit Information System (CIS).
CIC Senior Vice President for Business Development and Communications Group Atty. Aileen L. Amor-Bautista emphasized this during the panel discussion on financial inclusion for the un(der)banked as part of the 2019 Finance Philippines — an international gathering for the country’s financial industry hosted by The Asian Banker at Shangri-La The Fort on October 10.
Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Benjamin Diokno served as the event’s keynote speaker and shared to the audience — CEOs, business heads, and senior executives of retail and consumer banking — that the BSP is in the process of ramping up the promotion of sustainable financing via enabling regulations, including capacity building, and implementing awareness campaigns.
Joining the CIC’s SVP in the panel discussion were Jolly Larosa, an international economist for development projects, and Mark Antigue, Security Bank’s VP Head for e-commerce. The Asian Banker’s Managing Editor Foo Boon Ping moderated the session.
“If they have six months’ worth of submission (at the time of application), they can be an accessing entity (AE) and access CIC credit reports,” Amor-Bautista said.
The CIC database contains basic positive and negative credit information of borrowers. It has 8.7 million unique data subjects as of September 2019.
On 27 September, CIC published the official list of 444 financial institutions that are submitting live or actual basic credit data of their borrowers to the CIC database. The list covers all sectors in the CIS ecosystem.
“These submitting entities (SEs) in production shall complete all the necessary documentation including the execution of a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) to establish their commitment to pay for the services derived from us,” Amor-Bautista continued.
She further clarified that both submitting and accessing entities are subject to the maintenance of existing data quality standards, as well as constantly improving said measures on the areas of periodicity, accuracy, and completeness, with the overarching aim of improving overall data quality.
On 4 October, the CIC announced the extension of the P10 per credit report fee for financial institutions as a way of introducing large-scale use of credit reports from the country’s sole repository of credit information. CIC’s President and CEO Jaime Casto Jose P. Garchitorena encouraged all SEs to get onboard to access data and take advantage of the introductory price.