CRB spreads its wings to non financial institutions

MONKAGEDI GAOTLHOBOGWE
Staff Writer | Friday February 19, 2010 00:00

In 2007, CRB Africa was contracted by the Bankers Association Botswana and its member banks to facilitate a bank sector credit bureau.Now the company says they are on the path to penetrating other sectors such as retail, insurance, micro-finance, besides fulfilling the contract they signed with bankers Association Botswana.

'We have been operating within the banking sector only, but now we are expanding into other markets while we shall continue to enhance the service we have been providing the banking sector', explained the company's MD Moraki Mokgosana in an interview yesterday.

Through the bureau, the participating banks share their customers' positive and negative credit information, with CRB Africa providing the platform. CRB Africa MD Moraki Mokgosana says currently the banks are sharing negative listings and that some of the criteria being used by the new company include loan/credit card default, bounced cheque, authorised overdraft, unauthorised overdraft, fraud, including cheque kitting, supplying false information to the bank when applying for credit, among others.

CRB Africa has operations in over 12 countries in Africa, covering East, West, North and Southern Africa.

Although it opened its offices in Botswana in 2003, the company has only concentrated its efforts on debt management services and credit risk management until it was contracted by the Bankers Association Botswana in 2007.

When it was contracted by the banking sector in 2007, the banking sector said they were suffering a high credit defaultment rate caused by heavy indebtedness to multiple financial institutions by consumers, among other factors.

When it was first established, CRB Africa would initially hold data on default information with particular emphasis on the exclusion of habitual defaulters and migratory debtors, and extend to accessing full credit histories of clients.

The company uses the closed user group concept, which was developed by the Bankers Association of Botswana together with CRB Africa to address the specific needs for an information-sharing mechanism for credit grantors operating in competitive, regulated settings in confidence.

The software offers a simple and secure user-friendly interface to access the credit records in real-time.The existence of such a mechanism has been shown to facilitate improved recovery efficiencies for current non-performing loans and bad debts.

Information that the database holds is provided by all member banks, but the aggregated information record of any consumer will not be released to any other member bank without the consent of the consumer concerned.

The Credit Bureau is also designed to provide for the use of 'reputation collateral' as a core lending criterion, allowing the individual borrower with a good past payment track record access to enhanced credit facilities