Subscribers to Creditinfo Guyana (CIG) will now be able to request and view their credit reports online, as the company launched its new service on Friday.
Speaking to the media at their New Market Street office, IT Consultant Phil Mingo explained that with their e-service, persons will be able to access their personal credit report or a credit report for their company online, as opposed to having to visit their office.
This, he said, will make the services the company offers more streamlined and accessible for persons living outside of Georgetown.
Customers will also be able to request monitoring of their account and institutions will be able to monitor their customers.
“Sometimes you would want to know whether a bank or other institution or anybody would’ve enquired about your credit score. Instead of having to come here you can actually go online and access your credit score or file disputes if you noticed disparities in your report,” Mingo explained.
The first credit report for the year will be free for everyone, but additional ones will come at a cost of $1,600, while a company credit report will cost $2,200. However, for customers interested in additional services such as monitoring, a fee of $5,000 per six month is attached, while for a full year, persons would have to pay $9,000, which also comes with two credit reports.
Persons interested in viewing their credit report will have to submit their name, national identification number, along with the photo of the ID or any other form of identification, their resident address, contact number and email address.
For persons interested in obtaining a credit report for their company, information such as the company name, business registration with the attached photo, tax number with the attached photo, name of the person requesting the information, contact number and email address will be required.
Verified
He said that the detailed information is collected and verified to ensure that persons requesting the information are true to their identity.
While payments can be made directly to the company’s office, they also use GTT’s Mobile Money service, which can be used to pay any fees.
Mingo also noted that the credit score ranges from 250 to 900, with 250 being the lowest. While different institutions will have different requirements for a “good” credit score, from 600 and up is acceptable by most companies.
Also speaking at the event, Judy Semple-Joseph, the company’s Chief Executive Offi-cer, explained that they will be taking the company to the next level with the launch of their new platform.
Creditinfo is a global company that operates in 45 countries around the world, including three Caribbean territories; Jamaica, Guyana and Barbados.
Semple-Joseph said that they specialise in solutions for credit risk management and support lenders along the credit lifecycle, by providing solutions for them with intelligent information, instead of just data that users and lenders can utilise for their credit risk management process to make decisions, monitoring and managing their portfolios.
“For the last six years, what we have seen is an opening of the market. What we have essentially done is created a whole new industry in Guyana by our presence. We worked with lenders and not just traditional lenders in the banking and non-banking financial sector but non-traditional lenders such as utility companies and hire purchase entities,” she explained, while noting that currently they have 250,000 credit active customers in their database.
Currently, the company is subscribed to by all the local banking institutions, three of the four utility companies and other hire purchase companies.
Mandatory
While the submission of data before to the company was not compulsory, changes in the Credit Reporting [Amendment] Act of 2016 made it mandatory for institutions to submit the data, which Semple-Joseph says now allows them to operate fully.
She said that this has resulted in an expanded usage of the company, which has resulted in more persons accessing credit from the formal sector, as credit decisions are made faster by lending institutions.
“All of that is facilitated because they can now make more informed decisions at a faster rate because of the fact that they have access to our system,” she said.
Semple-Joseph also noted that they have recorded a decline in delinquency rates, which shows that people are more aware and responsible of their borrowing habits and are exhibiting good payment behaviour.
The quality of the credit data in their database has also improved since they have invested in a software that allows for the “cleaning and merging of data.”
“By law everyone is entitled to one free credit report every year and that allows you to ensure that you use that as a means of verifying the accuracy of the data in the database. We have evolved merely from a basic credit reporting agency to what we call a full risk management solutions company,” she added.
Persons interested in having a free credit report or utilising the company’s service, can visit the website at creditinfo.gy.
