Banks to collect late payment data

Biroul de Credit (The Loan Office), the company that was set up by Romanian banks in order to benefit from more information on the financial creditworthiness of potential customers, started operating yesterday. During the first stage, the office will supply information concerning those customers who are more than 30 days late in paying back their loans. Though the system was initially supposed to include a database on all loans contracted by natural persons, which would have allowed banks to check their customers’ solvency, reporting such information has been postponed because of a lack of legislative support. Thus, the Office will become operational through three stages. In the first stage, the system will process only negative information (showing whether a customer has outstanding debts). Only banks will participate in this stage. During the second stage, positive information will also be processed (only practically referring to the existence of a loan contract), and during the third stage the system will be able to supply scoring products. The deadline for the implementation of the second phase is April 4, 2005, while the third phase will not be implemented before 2006. ZF