STATE-RUN Credit Information Corp. (CIC) has pushed back anew the full launch of the country’s centralized credit information system as it is set to give access to select individual borrowers.
In an interview, CIC Senior Vice-President for Business Development and Communications Aileen L. Amor-Bautista said the national credit information system should be widely available by the beginning of December, behind its earlier target to get it running by the third quarter.
“The system is already live in a sense that submitting entities or the financial institutions can access the data for monitoring purposes. But we’re not yet providing credit reports to the borrowers,” Ms. Amor-Bautista told BusinessWorld.
“But hopefully in the beginning of December, we would be able to give credit reports to the data subjects in line with the ease of doing business.”
She added that individual borrowers who wish to request for credit information are expected to be allowed to physically access data by December, although they have to book an appointment before the CIC gives credit reports.
“We’re allowing online registration first before they come to our office so that we can provide them the credit reports. We’re just slowly opening the system.”
Earlier, CIC President and Chief Executive Officer Jaime P. Garchitorena said the national credit information system should go live in third quarter following its January target as it is still ensuring the quality and safety of data.
Soon enough, Ms. Amor-Bautista said, the credit registry will have an online platform where individuals can request for credit data, although there is still no timeline for this facility.
“What we’re avoiding is to make these data available online and might be subject to possible hacking and infringement,” she said. “But the plan is really to course it through the credit bureaus.”
Currently, there are four official credit bureaus or special accessing entities namely local firm CIBI Information, Inc., South Africa’s Compuscan, Italy’s CRIF S.p.A, and United States’ TransUnion Information Solutions, Inc.
Amid work to make the national credit information system fully available, the CIC is still collecting data from lending institutions.
“We’re at that stage of populating the database. It’s ongoing,” Ms. Amor-Bautista noted.
As of Oct. 22, the CIC already has 5.867 million unique data from financial institutions such as banks, cooperatives, credit card firms, insurers and government-owned and -controlled firms, among others.
Out of the 1,637 institutions in talks with the CIC on how to file credit data, 310 are now regularly submitting and updating loan information. — Karl Angelo N. Vidal

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