CreditRegistry Nigeria – 2023 Review

CreditRegistry is Nigeria’s largest credit bureau.

A credit bureau is an organisation that collects and collates credit information on individuals and businesses with the main purpose of creating credit reports and scores.

CreditRegistry, the first credit bureau in Nigeria, is a company fully licensed and regulated by the Central Bank of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to provide credit services and risk management tools to individuals and businesses, and it is one of the three major credit bureaus in Nigeria.

CreditRegistry offers free instant access to credit reports without the need for registration. The main products from CreditRegistry include:

• Credit Report
• SMARTScore
• CreditConnection for consumers
• GetPaidFaster for businesses

Services Offered

A major function of any credit bureau is the compilation of credit reports for individuals and businesses. This credit report contains detailed information on your credit history and, most importantly, your overall credit score.

CreditRegistry offers credit monitoring services also, as this ensures that the credit reports and scores are regularly updated and are accurate representations of the customer’s history at any particular point of inquiry. 

CreditRegistry takes things one step further by ensuring that consumers, businesses, lenders, financial and non-financial institutions all have unique services tailored to them.

Creditors can use artificial intelligence-oriented solutions and predictive models to reduce risk and increase revenue.

Consumers can get help with credit accountability to increase creditworthiness and foster access to better credit facilities.

Businesses can gain access to facilities that will help them make informed decisions.

Consumers, businesses and lenders can all take advantage of the easy-to-use services provided by CreditRegistry.

These CreditRegistry Services include:

• Risk Assessment Support for creditors
• Customer Strategic Acquisition for creditors
• Recovery Support for creditors (Skip Tracing)
• CreditConnection for consumers
• Marketing and Risk Management solutions for businesses
• API Access

Risk Assessment Support for Creditors

The risk assessment support helps creditors to effectively reduce the risk of providing credit while also aiding the recovery of unpaid debt. It is a service package that is made up of other mini-services.

These services include:

• KYC
• Credit reporting
• SMARTScore
• Dud Cheque
• Portfolio Monitoring

KYC

KYC stands for “Know Your Customer”. This CreditRegistry product allows creditors to confirm if a customer is who they say they are. It assists creditors with collecting and confirming data like:

• Personal details (names, addresses, date of birth)
• Bank Verification Numbers (BVN),
• National Identification card

It is an easy-to-use and affordable pre-qualification service for borrowers.

Credit reporting

CreditRegistry credit reporting service helps creditors determine the creditworthiness of customers by showing their available credit history. This helps lenders make informed decisions on loan decisions as well as other creditors before they open new lines of credit for customers.

SMARTScore V3

This CreditRegistry product is a general report card that displays a summarised credit status of a customer using numbers only. This tool significantly cuts time when It comes to decision-making, expands marketing and sales abilities to keep the best customers, and also helps determine the decisions that customers might make.

Unlike FICO and VantageScore, which go from 300 to 850, CreditRegistry score ranges from 0 to 900. It, however, has the same significance and the same meaning as the FICO and VantageScore numbers which represent the creditworthiness of customers.

CreditRegistry has two number ranges to classify the ratings:

• Thin file customers represent customers that fall between 10 and 99
• Thick file customers represent customers that fall between 100 and 999

SMARTScore V3 weighting factors are:

• Credit Limit
• Length of credit history
• Paid off credit lines
• Debt
• Arrears history
• Demography
• Credit lines opened

Dud Cheque

The Dud-Cheque Information Manager (DIM) helps your bank meet the CBN requirement to discourage repeat dud-cheque offenders and prevent them from using dud-cheques to access credit.

This risk management tool on offer by CreditRegistry keeps serial dud-cheque users away from the clearing system.

Portfolio Monitoring Report (PMR)

CreditRegistry’s PMR allows financial and non-financial institutions to access their portfolio’s exposure information across the industry.

Apart from revealing the portfolio risk exposure of existing customers with other credit facilities, it also provides credit line marketing with cross-selling avenues that generate revenue, dramatically reduces delinquencies and losses while also increases the chances of debt collection.

It essentially allows institutions to categorise customers, to know which ones to mind, mitigate, market and manage. It features:

• Total Exposure details
• Total portfolio balance
• industry portfolio performance
• product balances and breakdown
• Customer external exposure
• Product industry performance
• Customer internal exposure

Customer Strategic Acquisition for Creditors

This is also a service package for CreditRegistry subscribers made up of other credit services. These services include:

• Campaign reports
• Enhanced search listings

Campaign reports

CreditRegistry campaign reports help institutions sift through prospective customers to know which customers are creditworthy. This tool uses current information from the credit bureau to determine the creditworthiness of existing customers to know customers that should be flagged as liability customers.

It helps:

• Increase revenue by constantly getting customers
• Reduce turnaround time
• Increase consumer retail lending portfolio

Enhanced search listings

This CreditRegistry tool helps lenders find prospective customers that match specified criteria. Creditors can input the class of customers they wish to approach with their products.

It allows creditors to:

• Target qualified customers with pinpoint marketing
• Identify ideal clients
• Increase awareness for services among prospective customers
• Increase productivity
• Cement reputation

Institutions that will find this particular tool most useful include:

• Recruitment agencies
• FinTech companies
• Law firms
• Commercial Banks
• Finance Houses
• Renewable energy companies
• Real estate
• Microfinance banks
• Travel agencies
• Telcos

Recover Support for Creditors (Skip Tracing)

CreditRegistry helps creditors with delinquent customers through skip tracing.

Skip tracing collects information from other subscribers of the bureau who are creditors to identify borrowers who may have changed contact details. These borrowers would be otherwise untraceable as they would have changed their contact details (home address, office address, phone number, etc.).

This tool tracks delinquent customers and helps recover debts. It can generate:

• Other addresses
• Telephone numbers
• Aliases
• Employment locations
• Business affiliates

CreditConnection for Consumers

This tool keeps consumers connected to their credit reports to help them see what lenders see when making credit decisions concerning them.

It helps consumers explain their credit reports, check their SMARTScore, and build and manage their credit history.

Marketing and risk management solutions for businesses

CreditRegistry provides various B2B products to help businesses improve operations concerning their credit facilities by helping them get paid on time, every time.

GetPaidFaster is one the major products that help businesses screen customers, set friendly payment reminders and easily collect overdue payments and debt. It automatically reports seriously overdue payments to the credit bureau.

API Access

API stands for “Application Programming Interface”. CreditRegistry has numerous tools that grant API access to enable customers to integrate artificial intelligence and programming into their activities for ease of operations.

The CreditRegistry Automated Credit Information (AutoCred) allows customers who are authorised to search and order their credit reports and scores.

It can use Report API endpoints to gain access to:

• Credit report data
• Proprietary standard bureau data block (SBDB) with summaries and score characteristics
• Proprietary SMARTScore
• Search and request customer data

SMARTScore Retro allows institutions to determine customers that were granted loans who should not have been granted loans, and customers who were declined loans that should have been granted loans.

It enables the generation of standard bureau characteristics for customers in loan books to determine the efficiency of your organisation in giving out loans, thus increasing profitability.

Pros of CreditRegistry Nigeria

CreditRegistry Nigeria provides comprehensive credit reports and scores like the other credit bureaus in Nigeria. Some of its advantages include:

• CreditRegistry Nigeria’s credit monitoring service can help individuals and businesses detect and prevent fraud
• CreditRegistry Nigeria has a strong reputation in the market being the pioneer credit bureau in the country
• Sophisticated API access to improve operations for businesses

Cons of CreditRegistry Nigeria

Like the other credit bureaus, there might be aspects of CreditRegistry’s operations that customers might consider as drawbacks. Some of these are:

• Some customers may find CreditRegistry Nigeria’s fees to be high
• CreditRegistry Nigeria’s customer service may not always meet the expectations of all customers
• Many businesses might find the API access use too complicated

Conclusion

CreditRegistry Nigeria is a credit bureau that provides credit reports, scores, and monitoring services to individuals and businesses in Nigeria.

It also provides unique services to consumers, lenders, and businesses to help each provide and use credit facilities appropriately.

CreditRegistry Nigeria’s services have both advantages and disadvantages, and it’s important for customers to consider these when deciding whether to use the company’s services.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)