Credit Information Services Limited (CIS) will be exiting the credit reporting space after a decade which has been dominated by EveryData Jamaica Limited (formerly Creditinfo Jamaica Limited) and CRIF Information Bureau Jamaica Limited.

Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) made the revelation in its 2024 annual report but did not give an exit date.

The development comes more than a decade after CIS received its credit bureau licence in August 2014.

CIS is owned by Jean S Anderson who was last reported to own 56.19 per cent of the company as per its 2018 annual return submitted to the Companies Office of Jamaica. The other shareholders include Louis Spence, Michelle A Toyloy-Carter, Marlene Garrett, and Caltec Scoring Technologies which is based in the Dominican Republic.

The company’s website (http://www.credit.cisjamaica.com/) cannot be reached.

EveryData Jamaica and CRIF Information Bureau are the other two licensed credit bureaus in Jamaica, with both receiving their licences in March and April 2012, respectively. EveryData Jamaica is owned largely by Creditinfo Group HF, a global credit bureau with operations in more than 33 countries. Its founder and chairman, Reynir F Grétarsson, along with Coalesce Credit Solutions Limited are the other shareholders of EveryData Jamaica. Christopher Brown is EveryData Jamaica’s chief executive officer.

CRIF Information Bureau Jamaica started as a joint venture between Massy Holdings Limited (Massy Group) and CRIF SPA.

In March 2017 CRIF SPA bought out Massy Holdings to make the Jamaican business a wholly owned subsidiary. CRIF is a global company that specialises in credit bureau reporting and information reporting systems with operations in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe. It began operations in 1988 in Bologna, Italy. Robert Gordon is the general manager of CRIF Information Bureau Jamaica.

Credit bureaus allow for credit information providers (CIPs) to submit and request information on individuals and businesses who use any type of credit-like arrangement, such as credit cards, hire purchase, microfinancing, or bank loans. The data collected by the credit bureaus is used to generate a credit report which speaks to all open and past credit obligations. This information is used to generate a credit score to gauge the potential risk for a data subject or potential borrower to default or not maintain their credit obligations.

For EveryData Jamaica, the scores range from 250 (E3), which is very high risk, to 900 (A1), very low risk. This means that someone with a 750 credit score is more than likely going to repay a provider of credit (lender) than someone with a 400-credit score who likely had negative events in the past which are dragging down their credit score.

According to the BOJ’s 2024 annual report, there were 143 CIPs signed with the three credit bureaus. The number of CIPs which provided data to the credit bureaus declined by two to 63, while the number of CIPs requesting or pulling data from credit bureaus increased by eight to 90. The increase in the number of CIPs was stated to have been influenced by the passage of the Microcredit Act (2021) and the licensing of microcredit firms, which stood at 65 licensees at the end of 2024.

As per the Credit Reporting Act (CRA), each Jamaican is able to request a free credit report once per year from each credit bureau to verify the data that has been submitted by CIPs.

Despite credit bureaus being in operation for more than 12 years, only 16,478 free credit reports were requested in 2024 by individuals or 3.46 per cent of the 476,178 credit reports issued during the year, inclusive of the free reports. Even at the peak of credit reports issued in 2019 — 582,822 — only 8,636 free reports were issued or just 1.48 per cent of the total reports for the year.

This sharp contrast in free credit reports accessed by individuals stands out as there are 1,196,272 subjects in the database of credit bureaus or 62.4 per cent of Jamaica’s adult population. The number of account records at the end of 2024 was 4,500,884.

Currently, people can request a free credit report anytime at EveryData Jamaica’s website
https://jm.my.everydata.com/login. However, applicants must send certified copies of all documents sent to CRIF Information Bureau Jamaica via e-mail (customerservice.jm@crif.com) to access their credit report.

While there were no complaints that were escalated to the BOJ on credit bureaus, there was an observed decline in the number of consumer complaints from 5,863 to 3,164 — less than one per cent of the total credit reports issued for the year.