THE Credit Information Corp. (CIC), the country’s sole public credit registry and repository of credit information, announced it will implement a new pricing scheme for its credit data used by its Accessing Entities (AEs) and Special Accessing Entities (SAEs).
A wholesale price of P20 per credit report inquiry may be availed through a pre-purchase of a minimum of one million reports annually and a new retail price of P30 per credit report will apply for all other cases of access to the database starting April 1, the CIC said through a statement.
Basic credit reports purchased under this new pricing scheme will have a 12-month expiration period, the agency added.
The CIC further explained that a new pricing scheme, as approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) en banc, is based on the value of the bureau’s continuously growing and improving database, which contains the credit data of 30.7 million unique individuals and with well over 100 million loan contracts.
To ease the transition, the corporation extended its current inquiry fee—a wholesale price of P10 and a retail price of P15—which was set to expire last January 31 and may be availed by AEs and SAEs until March 31, 2022.
CIC President and CEO lawyer Ben Joshua A. Baltazar said they are inviting AEs to take advantage of the current promotional pricing during this 2-month transition period “to maximize their use of CIC Credit Reports throughout the year.”
Credit reports purchased at the current promotional price will be valid for use until December 31, 2022.
Largest database
BALTAZAR also underscored in the statement “how the continued improvement of reportorial compliance of its covered entities has allowed the CIC to consolidate credit data into the single largest, most comprehensive and diverse credit database in the country.”
The CIC said it has also implemented “various reforms to continue the data quality improvement process and develop a more effective credit reporting system such as the data quality and usability assessment, or DQUA.” According to the CIC, the DQUA ensures the adequacy, accuracy and usability of the credit data it receives and process.
Baltazar said these initiatives “enable access to accurate, timely and consistent primary information directly establishing creditworthiness.”
“We believe that the new credit report pricing scheme better reflects the quality and value of CIC data. This information is essential to the financial sector’s credit risk management and ‘credit decisioning,’ especially amid the continuing pandemic,” he was quoted in the statement as saying. “The CIC credit data is still the most cost-effective way for lenders to properly evaluate their borrowers.”
Almost a million credit reports were already pulled by CIC’s AEs and utilized for their “credit-decisioning” activities from 2020 to 2021, attesting to their usefulness in evaluating the financial standing of borrowers, the government-owned and –controlled corporation said.
The CIC announced preparations to roll-out the direct-to-consumer (D2C) credit reports through AEs (“D2C thru AE”) initiative to provide borrowers the convenience of securing their credit report from their chosen lender. This facility will initially cover a select pilot batch of Accessing Entities and will be expanded to include more lenders throughout the year.
To note, banks or other financial institutions could provide assistance to accessing credit reports.