Even responsible borrowers have situations when, for some reason, they are denied a loan. Banks have the right not to tell customers the reason for their decision. To understand why this happens, you can order a report from the credit bureau.
This, contrary to popular belief, is simple and safe. Any citizen who has a passport can contact the organization.
What is a credit bureau?
A credit bureau is a commercial institution that is licensed and registered in the state registry. It collects, systematizes and stores information about the credit histories of entities, including loans, loans and the performance of obligations thereon, and about personal data of borrowers.
Banks and microfinance companies without fail cooperate with one or more organizations, they must regularly send there information about all changes in the CI of their clients.
An individual's credit dossier can be kept at several bureaus. To find out where it is located, the borrower needs to contact the Central Catalog. This institution consolidates all the data, but does not provide reports directly.
As of July 2018, according to the Central Bank, 13 credit bureaus are registered in the register. This figure will change if one of them is reorganized or a new one is registered.
Industry Leaders:
- NBCH;
- Equifax
- OKB;
- BKI "Russian Standard".
Targets and goals
In Russia, an orderly system for collecting and storing credit histories was introduced in 2005, but so far not all citizens know what the objectives of the creation of the BKI were. It:
- Creating a single database of borrowers and information on their loan obligations.
- Collection of relevant credit histories of entities.
- Reducing the risks of lenders by assessing the reliability and responsibility to fulfill the obligations of potential borrowers.
- Reducing the waiting time for a decision to grant a loan to a lender or a decision to refuse.
- One of the tasks of the credit history bureau (BCI) is to minimize the risk of forgery of information or illegal data adjustments.
BCI Functions
They are as follows:
- Reporting services on a paid and gratuitous basis to subjects of KI upon their request on the basis of a written application or other document certified by an electronic signature. Every citizen once a year has the right to find out his financial dossier for free.
- The provision of reporting services to KI users, including creditors, authorities, notaries, the Central Bank on the basis of a contract.
- Analyzing the information, the credit bureau determines the personal scoring of each CI entity. Scoring assessment is necessary for some types of lending.
- The provision of personal information from the title part and the transfer to the Central catalog of information about the formation of the subject's CI or change of his identification data. This credit bureau is required to complete within 2 business days.
- Creation of the code of the subject of credit history.
- The organization also transmits information on the cancellation of credit files to the CCCH.
- BKI provides the source with the opportunity to correct previously transmitted information, provided that the subject or user confirms the fact that the previous data is unreliable.
- Supervision of the activities of users of credit histories.
- BKI must protect the personal data of entities from unauthorized access, information leakage, blocking, deletion or unauthorized changes to data.
"National Bureau of Credit Histories"
This commercial organization was founded in 2005. At the moment, this is one of the largest BKIs, which covers 40% of the industry’s market, and the volume of credit histories stored in it exceeds 55 million. More than 1,000 organizations cooperate with the NBKI, including Alfa-Bank, Bank Vozrozhdenie, and Renaissance Credit, Rusfinance, as well as many other banking and microfinance institutions.
This bureau is characterized by constant improvements aimed at reducing the risks of lenders in approving and issuing loans, scoring of borrowers, as well as ways to detect fraud. Services provided by NBCHs, in most cases, have no analogues.
Equifax
The Equifax Credit History Bureau has international status; it began its activities in 1899 in the state of Georgia (USA). At the moment, it has a representative office in 24 countries. Equifax in Russia has concluded contracts with 2 thousand companies; its database contains 148 million credit histories of individuals and legal entities.
The head office is located in Atlanta, in Russia, the legal address of the Equifax credit bureau is as follows: Moscow, ul. Kalanchevskaya, 16, p. 1.
United Credit Bureau
This Russian company arose as a result of the merger of two bureaus: Expirian-Interfax and Infocredit. In the company Infocredit, 50% of the shares belonged to Sberbank, which in 2009 acquired a share (50%) of Experian-Interfax as well. The merger process lasted from 2009 to 2012.
"Expirian-Interfax" was formed in 2004, and in 2011 it was renamed OKB - "Joint Credit Bureau". During the merger, the name was preserved.
In 2018, the main shareholder - Sberbank, has the largest shareholding - 50%, the rest is distributed between Experian and Interfax. Earlier, Sberbank did not give access to other credit and non-credit organizations. After the merger, the situation has changed.
The database of BKI stores 331 million credit reports of 89 million entities. Banks, microfinance and insurance companies with a total number of more than 600 collaborate with OKB.
"Russian standard"
The bureau began its work in 2005, but during the first 3 years it collaborated with only one bank of the same name. For this reason, there are significantly fewer credit histories in its database (15 million files). Since 2008, the organization’s management decided to expand the scope of cooperation in order to have more complete and up-to-date information.
This BKI works with individuals and legal entities, each of the entities can request a report through a personal account on the site, if he is already a client of the Russian Standard Bank.
How to change incorrect information?
Although the CI data transmission system is automated, employees of credit institutions enter information, and they are not immune to accidental errors. One of the functions of the bureau is the ability to correct incorrect information if there is confirmation.
If the subject of the credit report noticed an error, he must draw up a statement, and then send or take it on his own to the bureau that serves his financial institution. The statement recommends that the problem be described in detail, backed up with supporting documents:
- If a closed loan is shown as active, you must attach a copy of the application for closing the account or payment receipts.
- If there are delays that the borrower does not agree with, documents on payment will also help, since they have the time and date of the operation.
Important: the financial institution that submitted the incorrect data will correct the error. According to the law, a claim can be transferred directly to him, but practice shows that this process will drag on for a long time or the borrower will be refused at all.
It is much faster to do this through the BIC, as upon receipt of the application the credit bureau will check the information and send the documents to the financial institution, which is obliged to give an answer and correct the error. The entire procedure takes 30 days.
Banks, when considering an application for a loan, do not check the accuracy of the CI, by default it is considered that it is correct in the BCI. Therefore, it is in the interest of the subject of the credit dossier to request a report at least once a year to control the information.