Credit Bureau watches 90% of market

The Credit Bureau has now come to supervise approximately 90% of Romania’s banking market, after a major bank joined the system in the last few days of last year. “At the end of last year we came to supervise 90% of the banking system (compared with 70% before that), following the entry of a major bank in this system. At the same time, a financial company signed an agreement to participate in the system, with technical details currently being worked out and likely to be completed in January. For this year, I plan to maintain a closer relationship with non-banking companies,” Serban Epure, the Credit Bureau manager told Ziarul Financiar. According to the Bureau official, the increase in the lending volume at the end of the year started showing across the system as early as November, with the number of daily queries on a constant rise. “The holiday shopping spree in Romania started showing in the second half of November, when the number of queries increased significantly from 4,700/day to approximately 5,500. The record was registered on December 2, when we processed about 8,006 queries,” Epure says. He specified no new bank had joined the system in the period that could have boosted the number of queries. He added 120,000 queries had been processed from the beginning of December through Christmas compared with 115,000 for the entire November. Records are also significant when it comes to overdue loans, with the Bureau data showing 163,066 people with overdue loans. The institution’s archives provide information about a further 73,852 people. ZF