Last week, a new credit reference bureau (CRB) regulation was announced where banks, saccos and micro-finance lenders will face a fine of Sh2 million for every defaulter they deny a loan for being listed negatively with the credit reference bureaus.
Despite the Monetary Policy Committee revising down the CRB and CRR to free up more funds for commercial banks to lend, financial institutions have been reluctant to offer loans to more than 2.5 million Kenyans negatively listed with the CRBs.
Credit referencing is an integral pillar to the credit market because lenders are able evaluate their risks and to price loans according to the credit history of the individual, which basically means CRB enables them to price risk effectively.
So, what Treasury and Central Bank should do is to make credit reference bureaus efficient by enforcing better reporting where all lenders should report all the positive listing (repayments) in real time and same day basis.
So, creating an efficient credit referencing framework will have the Central Bank heading straight towards the goal of improving access to the credit market, if I am to use Mervyn analogy, and will even help regulate digital lenders better when they come back on board.
