June 4, 2018
June 4, 2018
In March 2018, Jamaica Public Service Company Limited (JPS), an integrated electric utility company and the sole distributor of electricity in Jamaica, began submitting data to CRIF on both residential and commercial customers. Thanks to this data integration, CRIF Information Bureau Jamaica Ltd. will see a significant increase in subject data, with its database covering 100% of all the data related to electricity contracts and bills in Jamaica.
CRIF is the first and only credit bureau in Jamaica to include the JPS data, which will be used to better identify individuals who to date do not have a financial institution loan. In the near future, they also may be used to create proxies to evaluate the creditworthiness of unbanked people or those who are new to credit.
The acquisition of this dataset is compliant with the provisions of the Credit Reporting Act of 2010, which allows for the sharing of information between specified entities and licensed credit bureaus.
This is especially useful in developing countries where the integration of credit information with utilities data represents a key element to accelerating financial inclusion; in particular, for MFIs and Telcos that rely on these data to help people without a credit history to access credit.
