A pioneer provider of Credit bureau services in Nigeria, CR Services Plc (CreditRegistry), last week formally announced its conversion to the status of a public company.

Speaking at a press briefing in Lagos, the Managing Director of the company, Mr. Taiwo Ayedun said that they were now positioned to deliver innovative, world class bureau services to the Nigerian market and was focused on providing Nigerian leaders with innovative credit bureau services in order to solve the peculiar problems of the country.

According to him, CreditRegistry creates a platform for banks, lenders, retailers, telecoms services providers and pay TV providers, among others to share information about the credit performance of their customers. “when such information is available these institutions are put in a position to make informed credit risk decisions and are able to do more profitable credit-based businesses.”

He explained that since its incorporated has remained a partner to the Credit Risk Manager Association (CRIMA), the largest association of risk managers in Nigeria. The MD observed that the partnership had led to a three month Technical Evaluation of CreditRegistry Services by the Risk Management and IT staff of about 50 banks. “an overwhelmingly majority (94 percent) approved of the services, commending its ease of use and unique biometric advantage.

With over 1 million items of borrower information and close to 20 subscriber institutions, the company has over the years developed innovative services for the Nigerian market and has witnessed steady growth within Nigerian market,” he said and added that “CreditRegistry is ready to stimulate economic expansion and wealth creation in Nigeria by promoting, through reliable credit information, the social accountability mechanisms that will enable faster building of trust between parties in economic transaction.”

Ayedun said that CreditRegistry’s consumer identification technologies were more reliable and secure than identification numbers used by traditional credit bureau systems.
This enables he said banks to determine the true identity of their customers, thereby minimizing the risk of loan default while protecting consumers from identity theft.

He listed the benefits that its clients would stand to gain as faster growth for banks through pre-screening which would help them acquire customers quickly, and added that other advantages of CreditRegistry to customers included; prevention of financial fraud. Knowing your customers true identity he said prevents identity theft and enables proactive monitoring of borrowers risk status and pattern, lower default rates as efficient exchange of credit information deters borrowers’ abuse of credit, obtaining comprehensive reports and credit scores reduces lending risk thereby improving risk measurement, reductions in operational costs for credit assessment through automation of the external loan origination process for large-scale consumer credit and meeting base compliance for credit risk measurement using the Internal Rating Based(IRB) approach.

Ayedun stated that in demonstrating foresight on the need to protect the consumer from identity fraud, CreditRegistry invented the integrated biometrics technology for consumer identification.