People planning to borrow from banks and other lending institutions and wishing to know their creditworthiness can now request for their credit report online, according to the Credit Information Corporation (CIC).

CIC, the government-run central credit registry and repository of credit information, has built up a huge database covering more than 18 million Filipino borrowers, or almost 30% of the Philippines’ adult population, who have 80 million contracts, nearly 59 million of which are installment transactions across more than 500 financial institutions. The coverage is seen to expand further with more financial institutions participating in the registry and submitting their borrowers’ credit data.

CIC provides credit reports, which are summaries of borrowers’ financial transactions, including loan contracts with lending institutions, utility subscriptions, and other obligations.

Credit reports can contain both positive and negative credit data. The credit data are submitted by different financial institutions such as banks, financing companies, microfinance institutions and cooperatives to CIC for processing, securing, and storage.

Credit reports with positive credit data can increase the chances of a borrower obtaining a loan. “In general, people with good track records of payment may receive lower interest rates or more services than those with poor payment track records,” noted CIC.

Those with a negative credit record can have it removed or corrected by paying the debt with the lender or bank, for example. In turn the financial institution is obligated to update its client’s record in its regular report submitted to the CIC.

To make credit records more accessible to the public, the CIC has now opened an Online Appointment Scheduler on its website at https://www.creditinfo.gov.ph/. This mechanism enables people to make an online request for a copy of their credit report with a credit score.

The CIC has also added an Online Dispute Resolution System (ODRS) for those who want to report erroneous data in their CIC credit report. The consumer should go to the CIC ODRS at https://www.creditinfo.gov.ph/dispute to make a filing.

The CIC also recently rolled out its Primary ID Number Tagging System, which aims to address issues encountered by cooperatives and microfinance institutions with borrowers that have no access to government-issued IDs.

Republic Act No. 9510, also known as the Credit Information System Act (CISA) of 2008, established the CIC to act as a central credit registry of Filipinos’ credit information.