credibility of CIB’s data reporting, nevertheless, depends largely on the integrity and timely supply of data by the financial institutions. “Financial Institutions (FIs) should focus on data mining so that they could translate the data into knowledge not only for the benefit of borrowers but also for their own. The FIs should focus on their in-house capacity building to ensure that the data submitted to the e-CIB is complete, accurate and in time. For this purpose, they can establish special CIB units aligned with the size of their database,” she added.
The SBP Governor said that the Credit Information Bureau (CIB) of SBP, ever since its inception, has played an extremely important part in gathering, organizing and disseminating critical information relating to credit-worthiness of borrowers to assist financial institutions in their lending decisions and forestalling the occurrence of default.
“It gives me a great satisfaction that CIB has not remained stuck with its initial mandate, and has responded positively to the ever-growing complexities and new challenges on the financial horizon by focusing on parallel development and improvement of its resources and scope. This is evident by the transformation of the previously simple and manual based activities of CIB to a more sophisticated and hi-tech operations of the new e-CIB,” she added.
Earlier, the President, Pakistan Banks’ Association, Naved A. Khan presented the welcome address.
The inauguration ceremony was attended, among others, by the Deputy Governors, Tawfiq A. Husain & Mansur-ur-Rehman Khan and the Executive Director, Jameel Ahmed of the SBP, Presidents, CEOs of all banks, DFIs, leasing companies and modarabas.
It may pointed out that with the launching of e-CIB, the Financial Institutions can now generate Credit Worthiness Reports separately for consumer borrowers and corporate borrowers online from the system, which will facilitate them in prudent decision making regarding sanctioning of loans and monitoring thereof. For consumer reports, the default history of the borrower will be maintained for a period of 12 months and the consumers with default history may find it very difficult to get finances from the financial institutions.
The SBP has embarked upon a comprehensive consumer awareness program for CIB users and launched the e-CIB web page on its website with following URL: http://www.sbp.org.pk/ecibhelpdesk.
This web page has been exclusively designed to facilitate and guide the users/borrowers to know about CIB, its operations, frequently asked questions, list of member financial institutions, and circulars issued by CIB. The borrowers/complainants can also lodge online complaints to redress their grievances. Besides, the consumer can also lodge their complaints through surface mail addressed to, Director, Banking Supervision Department, State Bank of Pakistan, I I Chundrigar Road, Karachi.
Consumers’ may file complaints against banks online
By our correspondent
KARACHI: State Bank of Pakistan on Monday announced the procedure of e-filing of consumers’ complaints related to commercial banks to central bank. The central bank has proposed a complaint form, which will be filed by the complainant, giving his name, old and new NIC Number, residential and official address, both residential, official and mobile telephone numbers, and E-mail address. In the columns of complaints, the complainant will send detail of the nature of complaint, the name of financial institution against which complaint is made, the (previous) response of the financial institution with already lodged complaint and if the matter is pending before any court of law, the details of court case will have to be sent. This is first time the central bank that it has started soliciting consumers’ complaints online. The complaint can be lodged on www.sbp.org.pk.ecibhelpdesk
