BCRBBahrain Credit Reference Bureau
BCRB, your business’ efficient credit manager
The Bahrain Credit Reference Bureau is a credit-data assimilator, operating under the trade name The Benefit Company BSC (Closed), a company licensed as an Ancillary Service Provider in Bahrain.
The Bureau acts as your business’ efficient credit manager as it receives, maintains, analyzes and classifies your clients’ credit information. As a member of the Bureau, you will be able to access your clients’ credit reports upon request.
All functions and services of the Bureau are determined by the Central Bank.
Features
Data Collection
The Bureau receives credit information from authorized entities and individuals and prepare credit reports based on the provided credit information, while also being obliged to receive complaints and disputes from you, other members and clients.
Data Sharing
Information regarding clients’ financial obligations and debts, including all types of credit facilities will be available with the Bureau, which can be accessed by you or other members of the Bureau upon submission of a request. The Bureau may also share information with Credit Bureaus outside the Kingdom as per Central Bank approvals.
Data Processing
Apart from collecting and sharing your clients’ credit data, the Bureau also analyzes and classifies their credit information for preparing statistics and various conclusive studies.
Rights & Relationships
While your clients are entitled to obtain their credit reports from the Bureau for free once every 12 months, as a member, you may:
Collect your client’s application for their credit report, and submit it to The Bureau.
Additionally, against a payment of BD 5.500 VAT inclusive, you may also collect client requests for a supplementary credit report and submit it to the Bureau.
Client requests should only be lodged after their identity is satisfactorily verified.
The Bureau has no right to approve or reject the application and must issue the report within two working days from the date of receiving your request, unless otherwise stated in the request.
Credit information is to be kept highly confidential at all times and even the Bureau is not allowed to keep a copy of reports. All reports shall be hand delivered or sent via registered mail.
Become a Member
The members of the Bahrain Credit Reference Bureau are those who are authorized by the law and government entities, ministries and Central Bank of Bahrain to provide the Bureau with credit information of their clients.
Taqareer
TAQAREER reporting service was established by Bahrain Credit Reference Bureau (BCRB) in 2016, with the objective of providing the regulator and BCRB members with qualitative and quantitative reports. It outlines the credit lending market share, exposure and performance at a market level, in respect to each member institution.
Currently the TAQAREER reporting system consists of over 60 reports including statistical and analytical reports, compliance and administrative reports as well as data management reports.
Scorecard Service
A credit score represents the creditworthiness of a person or the likelihood that person will pay his or her debts. It has shown to be very predictive of risk – allowing credit to be more widely available to consumers while lowering the cost of providing credit.
A credit score is primarily based on a statistical analysis of a person’s credit report information. Lenders (such as banks and financing companies) use credit scores to evaluate the potential risk posed by lending money to consumers. Credit scores are also used to mitigate losses due to bad debt. Through credit scores, lenders determine who qualifies for a loan, at what interest rate, and to what credit limits.
Complaints/Dispute Procedure
- The Bureau receives complaints/disputes from members, clients and the Central Bank. All complaints are recorded in accordance with the Bureau Code of Practice. In addition, all measures related to complaints the Bureau are documented.
- Members must resolve submitted client disputes within (5) five working days from the date of the dispute and notify the Bureau and the client accordingly.
- In the Bureau’s review, if an anomaly is not detected in the credit information, the Bureau must file it and inform the client of the decision and reason of filing it within one working day from the date of receiving the dispute.
- In case an anomaly is detected and the dispute is accepted, the Bureau must review it and make all necessary corrections in its system and forward it to the member who provided the information to review the dispute.
- Credit reports issued during the dispute review must include a reference to the dispute.
- Once amendments are made in the credit report due to a dispute, the Bureau must notify all enquirers who formerly made previous enquiries and obtained credit reports within the last (3) three months about the amendments.
Correction of Credit Information
It’s important to check that the data is correct and up to date because it can have a powerful impact on your finances.
The member must request to insert additional information related to the customer's credit status, with authenticity of the information received from the customer.
The information will be corrected in accordance with applicable rules and regulations.
The Bureau will notify the Central Bank of any dispute related to any misuse of the customer's credit information by any member for necessary action.
