Ranee Jayamaha: The financial performance of the Credit Information Bureau in Sri Lanka during 2005 Speech by Dr Ranee Jayamaha, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, at the Annual General Meeting of the Credit Information Bureau, Colombo, 23 June 2006. *  *  *  Members of the Head Table, the Board of Directors, the Shareholders of the CRIB, Chief Executives and Officials of Banks and Financial Institutions, Ladies and Gentlemen. I am pleased to present to you this evening the Chairperson’s report of the CRIB which summarizes the significant growth in business operations and the financial performances of the CRIB during 2005. Sri Lanka’s CRIB is one of the pioneer credit information bureaux in the South Asia region since its establishment in 1990. The year 2006 is a landmark in its history as the CRIB will begin to re-engineer its core business processes with enhancements and upgrades to the technological infrastructure. As indicated in the Annual Report, during 2005, the CRIB has recorded a remarkable growth in its businesses and achieved its primary objective of collecting, collating and dissemination of aggregate credit information for the use of stakeholder institutions. Reporting of credit information to, and complying with the Bureau’s requirements are mandatory and the CRIB has made a conscious effort to educate the member institutions of the reciprocal benefits of providing reliable credit information. Throughout the year, the CRIB has continued follow up work in refreshing and updating the existing credit database.

These measures have resulted in an increase of regular advances by 31% and a reduction of irregular advances by 3% during 2005. In addition to the increase in the number of credit reports disseminated by the CRIB, considerable efforts have been made to improve the quality of credit information through data-cleansing. By making mandatory the inclusion of the NIC number of individuals together with the business registration number, the CRIB has been able to provide more reliable credit reports thus facilitating the lenders’ credit decisions. In addition to the speedy dissemination of quality credit reports, the CRIB lays claim to a number of operational efficiencies achieved during 2005. With the introduction of the web-enabled credit report delivery system, CRIB’s operational efficiency has improved significantly while reducing its cost of operations. The one-hour service has been very popular and it has substantially enhanced CRIB’s income. Despite limitations and operational weaknesses, the collation of a delinquent credit card holder database was an added facility made available to its members. These witness the high performance of the CRIB during last year and its contribution to financial system stability by safeguarding the financial institutions from credit defaults and inculcating credit discipline among borrowers. While technological improvements and operational efficiencies are taking place, let us focus for a moment to assess whether the CRIB has been able to meet its public policy objectives and provide social justice for a wider segment of the population, although such objectives are not enshrined explicitly in the CRIB Act.