The Central Bank of Russia made a list of the country’s largest credit bureaus and indicated the number of dossiers provided by the banks (the Central Catalogue now contains over 15 million credit record entries). Among the largest credit bureaus are: Global Payments Credit Services Ltd., National Banking History Bureau, InfoCredit, and Experian-Interfax. These companies store over 92% of all Russian natural persons and legal entities’ records.

‘UralFinPromBank has been cooperating with National Banking History Bureau. When choosing a business partner, we looked at the quantity and quality of clients. If we decided on a company that only dealt with three or four regional banks, we would risk being given low-quality information,’ says Alexei Chernikov, Lending Director of UralFinPromBank.

‘The system has not proved effective yet; we often don’t need to inquire about our potential borrowers as most of them are well-known clients who provide their baking history themselves,’ Mr. Chernikov observed.

‘Our bank sends data to National Banking History Bureau in compliance with the legal terms. Sometimes the clients did not agree to this. Banks often conceal credit records at the request of confidentiality-conscious borrowers, especially since some information drain has already been recorded.’

‘The main thing is to get all the loan-giving banks take part in the information-sharing process. The work of credit bureaus would be much more efficient if they were region-based and controlled by the regional administration of the Central Bank of Russia. While the bureaus keep working as commercial organizations, the risk of losing data is extremely high,’ Mr. Chernikov said.