CBC Celebrates the 5th Anniversary of Transparent Credit Information Sharing in Cambodia
Published Date: Tuesday October 31st, 2017
On March 19th, 2012, after winning the National Bank of Cambodia’s request for proposal to create a credit bureau in the Kingdom, the CBC opened its operational bureau. Since its creation, the organization has been collecting data from all financial institutions in the country to provide the most complete, reliable and trustworthy information on credit in Cambodia. Data is used for individual credit reports, public market reports and professional services for financial institutions.
A support to growth in the Kingdom
The CBC is the first institution to everyone to provide trustful information on the credit market in Cambodia. Therefore, it makes it easier for investors to enter the market by consulting CBC’s public reports or requesting a tailor-made report based on the CBC’s database. The CBC was very proud to discover last year that its activities have allowed Cambodia to improve its ranking in Ease of Doing Business World Bank’s annual report, making Cambodia the 7th best country in the world for ease of getting credit. The score by country is calculated following a range of criteria, including the existence of a credit bureau and its compliance to international standards.
“Credit bureaus exist in most developed countries – Singapore, Japan, United States, Europe… – and ours is praised as being a successful model” comments Mr. Sothearoath Oeur, CEO of the CBC. “We are feeling great pride to contribute to Cambodia’s economic development”.
A neutral and independent institution to protect both institutions and borrowers
Working with more than 140 financial institutions in the country, the CBC is a neutral institution gathering data from all banks, micro-finance institutions, leasing companies and credit operators. Once the data is collected, the CBC analyzes and compiles it to create clear and regular information about credit market in Cambodia.
Since its creation in 2012, over 13 million individual credit reports have been generated by the CBC. Based on the information provided by institutions, reports allow to have a global view on a person’s credit situation. For borrowers, this is a chance to have a clear picture of their credit situation, and avoid getting involved in additional loans getting past their borrowing capabilities. For lenders, aside from the considerable amount of time gained while granting a loan, it is a valued tool to minimize risk and avoid fraud. All reports are protected and confidential, and can only be accessible by institutions after the enquirer has given its consent. All Cambodians also have the right to access to their personal credit report once a year at no cost.
Striving for better and more accurate data
The CBC constantly works on improving the quality of the data collected with rigorous and robust data management on the back-end side. Secured, protected, trustworthy and reliable data is paramount and part of the CBC’s daily monitoring. On the front-end side, the CBC provides trainings to financial institutions users when they first join the credit bureau as well as multiple other trainings during the year, or on-demand for a more tailored made training.
The CBC constantly listens and communicates with the financial institutions’ users to know what type of improvement is being sought by our users, hence it proposes at least 3 upgrades per year of its core credit report system. The CBC keeps its system constantly relevant to the evolution of the needs and the market.
“Five years is the first anniversary that we celebrate but we are confident that there will be many more to come!” says Mr. Sothearoath. “There is still a lot to do in Cambodia and we are very excited to keep developing our activities in the coming years.”
