CREDITINFO Jamaica Limited is set to begin its credit reporting operations, having satisfactorily met the conditions stipulated in its licence by the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ).

The company said it is set to “go live” following the BOJ’s advice to the minister of finance, Peter Phillips that it has demonstrated its readiness to commence business.

The company will now move to provide credit reports based on credit information provided by the institutions, which signed agreements and share such data in the company’s Credit Bureau System (CBS), the company said.

Megan Deane, CEO of Creditinfo, said that the company was elated that “we have cleared the final hurdle of over one year of rigorous evaluation and inspection by the Bank of Jamaica”.

“The company successfully demonstrated the capabilities of the CBS using real data, and now, it’s all systems go,” she said.

Having successfully fulfilled all the preconditions to operation, Creditinfo Jamaica can now provide services to the various categories of business that are denominated under the Act as being eligible to provide information to a credit bureau.

These include banks and other financial institutions, building societies, credit unions, securities dealers, hire purchase companies, insurance companies, the Students’ Loan Bureau, the National Housing Trust, microfinance companies and others as designated by the Minister of finance, to be a credit information provider.

“Creditinfo Jamaica anticipates that reliable, credible and accessible credit information and history will revolutionise the way credit decisions are made in Jamaica, facilitating better risk management, quicker decisions and more accurate pricing of risks associated with credit decisions,” Deane said.

She said persons who have difficulty accessing credit due to a lack of collateral will now be better positioned to do this provided they can demonstrate an excellent credit history and credit score.

The company will be investing heavily in training and the provision of technical oversight for the members of its user group, the CEO said, noting that a specialist in credit bureau systems and risk management will arrive on the island in early June to start training all signed credit information providers.

“Creditinfo Jamaica is committed to differentiating itself by focusing not just on the core business of individual and corporate credit information but also on developing value-added products from publicly accessible data sources, packaging them and making them easily accessible to users,” Deane said.

Creditinfo is the first credit-reporting firm to receive a licence to operate under Jamaica’s Credit Reporting Act 2010.