CBA CREDIT REGISTER’S REVENUES COVER EXPENSES ON ITS FOUNDATION
Noyan Tapan
Apr 02 2007
YEREVAN, APRIL 2, NOYAN TAPAN. In 2003 – the first year of work of
the Credit Register of the Central Bank of Armenia (CBA), it received
a thousand bids for information provision, in 2004 the number of
bids reached 10 thousand, in 2005 – 20 thousand, and in 2006 – 38
thousand. At the present time the register receives 4,000 bids for
information provision a month. The CBA Chairman Tigran Sargsian
stated this on April 2 during an event dedicated to the 4-year
activities of the Credit Register and the start of the operation of
the ACRA credit bureau. According to him, revenues received against
information provision cover the expenses on creation of the Credit
Register. It was noted that thanks to the Credit Register’s work,
there are almost no bad debts in the Armenian banking system and the
share of non-repaid credits is small. T. Sargsian said that as a result
of ACRA’s work, expenses on management of credit risks of commercial
banks, as well as time of credit receiving for credit seekers will be
reduced considerably. In his words, the credit-seeker’s credit history
scoring system should be introduced both in the Credit Register and
ACRA, which is especially important under conditions of constant
growth in consumer crediting volumes. "Our commercial banks do not
implement crediting without making use of services of the Credit
Register," T. Sargsian underlined, expressing a hope that information
to be provided by ACRA will also be in demand. It is possible that it
will also include the history of the credit receiver’s payments for
municipal services. Director of ACRA credit bureau Artak Arzunian
said that the the bureau in cooperation with the CBA is developing
a draft law on credit bureaus, whose adoption will create legal
bases for ACRA to receive and develop information from insurance
companies as well. T. Sargsian added that such cooperation with several
insurance companies is currently done on the contractual basis. The
indicated draft law will be submitted to the respective departments
for discussion on September 2007. The CBA chairman noted that Armenia
is ahead of Georgia and Azerbaijan in terms of institutional reforms
in the sphere of credit risk management. To recap, ACRA’s shareholders
are the CBA, the Union of Banks of Armenia, Dun & Bradstreet company –
a US leader in the sphere of credit risk management, Credential company
(US), and a number of natural persons.