CRC Credit Bureau Limited, in collaboration with Dun & Bradstreet, has launched into the Nigerian market a new device called ‘CRC Monitors and Alerts Service,’ with the aim of providing users the proactive means of constantly monitoring their credit portfolio. The service is received as an e-mail notification, with details of changes on loan records and details of searches/inquiries made on the customers.
The Monitors and Alerts package provides individual subscribers with daily e-mail notifications on any new loan record submitted to CRC by its members on the subject, and also changes on critical loan performance components of existing loans.
Meanwhile, at a time most deposit money banks in Nigeria are still smarting from the losses incurred over the years as a result of toxic debts, experts have suggested useful measures by which banks can avoid such pitfalls in 2017.
Speaking at a public forum organised by CRC Credit Bureau Limited in association with Dun and Bradstreet Credit Bureau Limited in Lagos, a cross-section of experts drawn from the financial service and related sectors observed that most of the banks were exposed to a lot of risks, especially oil and gas, whose revenue projections had been badly affected by the economic crunch.
According to Tunde Popoola, CEO, CRC Credit Bureau Limited, the challenge confronting most of the banks is how to reduce their risk portfolio given the bad debts they incurred these past years, especially at a time they have more risk assets.
Thankfully, he said, the CRC Credit Bureau has been able to develop full-proof measures that can help the banks contain the incidence of bad debts.
At the risk of sounding immodest, Popoola said what banks need to do to reduce the incidence of bad debts was to be more circumspect in the way they spread risks.
“Most of the toxic debts within the banking sector happened because they were done without proper due diligence analysis, as it were. But that can be taken care of with our products and services like I-CON Plus, which can help to build a good credit industry,” he said.
Also, Peggy Chukwuma-Nwosu, head of sales/marketing at CRC Credit Bureau, who gave a presentation on CRC Credit Monitors: Useful Tools to better manage customer loans, said the different products developed by CRC organisation leveraged technology.
Specifically, she said, the CRC prospector, which is one of her company’s offerings, “Provides alternative contact information of customers you can no longer reach.”
The lead speaker at the launch in Lagos, Miguel Llenas, who sits atop Dun & Bradstreet Credit Bureau Limited, a Dominican Republic-based firm with over 170 years’ experience in credit management, spoke on the theme of the ‘Mitigating Emerging Credit Risks in the Nigeria economy in 2017.’
Nigeria, he noted sadly, was passing through its worst economic woes in years because of her overreliance on a monoculture economy. “The crash in the price of crude globally, things in recent times, have gone terribly bad for the economy,” he said.
While lamenting that most banks in the country today were technically in distress because they chose to jettison core banking regulations, Llenas said: “Most Nigerian banks are not involved in serious lending, especially to the retail market.”
Raising some posers, Llenas, who boasts of over three decades experience as a credit expert said: “Do banks really need a credit bureau? How do you extend credit to customers if you don’t use credit report?”
Most of the banks in the country today, he insisted, “Have swift from lending to survival mode. Most of the banks are risk averse. This is partly why the economy is not moving forward.”
Speaking further, Llenas, who has traverse over 40 countries as part of his commitment to help grow the capacity of credit bureaus, stressed that Nigerian banks have the potential to drive the economy by lending to the critical sectors, especially the retail market rather than the high end market in order to enable them better manage risks when they occur.
“With credit monitoring, and a credit score, banks and lenders alike can easily predict the future. The use of credit report has to be a powerful tool if well harnessed,” he maintained.
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