Translated material
It won't be enough
The Central Bank calculated credit histories
The number of credit histories in Russia has exceeded 7 million - this is how many title parts have accumulated in the central catalog of credit histories of the Bank of Russia, the Department of External and Public Relations of the Central Bank reported on Friday. Thus, in less than two months, the number of title parts collected in the catalog increased by two million.According to the Central Bank, the largest bureaus in terms of the number of accumulated credit histories are Global Payments Credit Services, the National Bureau of Credit Histories and Infocredit. Although about 50 credit bureaus have been created in Russia, the top three account for more than 90% of the total volume of accumulated credit histories. The share of credit histories of individuals is 99.4% of the total number of title parts.
The National Credit History Bureau, created in March 2005 under the auspices of the Association of Russian Banks, had more than 2 million records at the end of June, while about 600 banks cooperate with NBKI. According to NBKI, the bureau's database is growing by an average of 600 thousand stories per month. Thus, by now the NBKI should already have collected more than 2.5 million credit histories.
The other two leading credit bureaus are created by large banks for their own convenience. As you know, the law “On Credit Histories” requires banks to transmit information about their borrowers to at least one credit bureau starting from March 1. Therefore, some large credit organizations considered it expedient to create their own bureaus “for internal use.”
In particular, Global Payments Credit Services was created by Home Credit and Finance Bank, which is one of the leaders in the consumer lending sector, and its bitter experience on this front cannot be overestimated. As is known, the bank's loss for the first half of 2005 according to Russian reporting standards amounted to $20 million. Home Credit became the only Russian bank that disclosed information about its huge losses, and at that moment a foreign parent structure helped it get out of the negative balance. At the beginning of July, the volume of the company's database containing the credit histories of borrowers exceeded 2.6 million records. Global Payments partners are about 50 financial institutions and mobile operators. “Our bureau initially considered it a priority to work with active retail banks,” said the bureau’s general director Oleg Lagutkin. “That’s why we saw the main goal in accumulating the largest database.”
The founder and main owner of the Infocredit bank is Sberbank (in addition, NRB and the Interregional Investment Bank became shareholders of the bureau). As you know, Sberbank occupies more than 50% of the retail lending market. According to the bank, by June 1, it had collected about 2 million records in Infocredit.
Optimists hope that in the near future, the development of credit bureaus will allow lenders to avoid unwanted risks and save significant money by looking into the credit history of a potential borrower. And “positive” borrowers, whose history will inspire confidence, will be able to take out a loan for any purpose in a short time and at a preferential interest rate, which will no longer include risks associated with defaulters.
However, one of the main problems of credit histories is still their insufficient number. According to the law, a borrower who comes to the bank for a loan may not agree to notify the credit bureau about the current agreement. In addition, he may not give permission to request information about him from the Central Bank. Another significant drawback of credit histories at this stage is that they are too short and it will be very difficult to make any decisions based on them.