Benefits from credit bureau (Part 2)

 Today, I am in Dumaguete City to formalize CIBI’s partnership with the Perpetual Help Community Coop Inc (PHCCI), one of the biggest and largest cooperatives in Negros Oriental/Occidental. PHCCI was established in 1971 with just 33 pioneer members. Now it has about 41,000 members and from a  P586 shared equity it has grown to over 400 million pesos to date. The said cooperative has Mr. Michael “Mike” Hojas as its General Manager.

With PHCCI’s participation and inclusion to our CIBI InfoNet Alliance Program, they will now be able to protect themselves from unnecessary exposure and credit risks. Likewise, with our partnership, PHCCI will directly benefit from us in the following terms.

First, PHCCI will be able to lessen their prospective loan granting risks through access of timely, systematic and up-to-date information for member applicants and existing members as well.

Second, it will institutionalize credit discipline to all their borrowers through submission of timely, reliable and useful, information pertaining to delinquent credit exposure and to reduce potential delinquency rate through an effective “credit information” exchange system.

Third, PHCCI will be able to maintain quality accounts receivables by monitoring “danger signals” using this “credit watch” system.

Fourth, it will strengthen primary coop’s relationships through sharing of necessary timely information as strategy to foster competence and alliance of each member’s sustainability.

Fifth, it will definitely enhance and improve the primary member’s credit management and credit administration know-how through the use of CIBI’s latest technology and increase each member’s collection efficiency by using CIBI’s name as leverage.

 Sixth, Provide additional mechanism to check pertinent information critical to “skip tracing” for members that seems to be “hiding” or unable-to-locate accounts among others using CIBI’s other related databases.

Credit bureaus or credit reporting agencies as they are more commonly known internationally are part of a billion dollar industry in the whole world. According to Associated Credit Bureaus, Inc., a trade association of credit bureaus and mortgage reporting companies in the United States, this industry consists of about 900 credit bureaus worldwide. The biggest of which are Equifax and Trans Union, these companies belong to the “big three”. Here in the Philippines we have, CIBI Information, Inc. the biggest and the leading credit reporting agency in the Philippines.

Incidentally, CIBI Information, Inc. was established in 1983 through the joint efforts of the then Central Bank (CB), the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines (Finex) and Securities Exchange Commission (SEC). CIBI Information database, called CIBI InfoNet On-Line is used mostly by banks, lending, and financing companies to provide them with corporate and individual reports.

(Mr. Ed F. Limtingco can be reached at 0917-7220521 or at [email protected])