Let’s improve information sharing for a more vibrant credit market
At 12 years, licensed credit information sharing is still relatively new. The CRBs and CIS Kenya are investing in knowledge generation and sharing for lenders and customers. It is to them we should turn for help.
The regulator should allow a reduction of the period over which bureaus hold negative data from five to two years.
The sensible thing is for banks to stop applying charges on accounts with zero balances.
The regulator must also overcome the phobia of data from outside regulated banks.
A good thing can be made better. And there is no doubt that credit information sharing is a work in progress.
There are five ways in which it can be improved: Shorten the duration of holding negative data, use alternative dispute resolution, allow more data sources, extend the use of scoring tools and provide better information to customers. Let’s examine these.
