Borrowers who wish to know their creditworthiness can now request for their credit report online, according to the Credit Information Corporation (CIC).
CIC, the government-run central credit registry and repository of credit information, has built up a database covering more than 18 million Filipino borrowers or almost 30% of the country’s adult population, who have 80 million contracts, nearly 59 million of which are installment transactions across more than 500 financial institutions.
The coverage is expected to expand further with more financial institutions participating in the registry and submitting their borrowers’ credit data.
CIC provides credit reports, which are summaries of borrowers’ financial transactions, including loan contracts with lending institutions, utility subscriptions, and other obligations.
Credit reports can contain both positive and negative credit data. The credit data are submitted by different financial institutions such as banks, financing companies, microfinance institutions and cooperatives to CIC for processing, securing, and storage.
Credit reports with positive credit data can increase the chances of a borrower obtaining a loan. “In general, people with good track records of payment may receive lower interest rates or more services than those with poor payment track records,” said CIC.
Those with a negative credit record can have it removed or corrected by paying the debt with the lender or bank, for example. In turn the financial institution is obligated to update its client’s record in its regular report submitted to the CIC.
To make credit records more accessible to the public, the CIC has now opened an online appointment scheduler on its website. This mechanism enables people to make an online request for a copy of their credit report with a credit score.
The CIC has also added an online dispute resolution system (ODRS) for those who want to report erroneous data in their CIC credit report. It has recently rolled out its primary ID number tagging system, which aims to address issues encountered by cooperatives and microfinance institutions with borrowers that have no access to government-issued IDs.
