Credit Amnesty – Latest – Feedback from Experian

Further to our previous communication outlining the published ‘Removal of Adverse Consumer Information and Information Relating to Paid up Judgements Regulations 2014’, a delegation from the Credit Bureau Association (CBA) met with the Department of Trade and Industry last week to seek further clarity on the Regulations.
Based on feedback from that meeting, we can confirm:
• The effective date of the Regulations is 1 April 2014;
• Effective 1 April 2014, credit bureaux are prohibited from making any information which qualifies for removal in terms of the Regulations, available to credit providers or other parties who may request it; and
• The information that qualifies for removal by no later than 1 June 2014, is adverse consumer credit information (as defined in s1 (a) to (d) of the Regulations) and paid up judgements as held on the database at 1 April 2014.
The DTI also clarified that the removal of adverse consumer credit information applies only to the status codes assigned to the various categories of adverse behavioural and adverse enforcement actions, and does not apply to the removal of the payment profile information. Thus, for those data suppliers who are members of the Credit Providers Association (CPA), they will continue to view payment profile information supplied by the various CPA members. Ensuring this information is up to date is therefore of benefit to all parties.
The DTI further confirmed that with respect to the on-going removal of all paid up judgement data, credit providers will be required to furnish all registered credit bureaux with information relating to paid up judgements within seven days of receipt of payment of the capital amount.
With effect from 1 June 2014, credit bureaux are also required to remove paid up judgement data within seven days of receipt of proof of payment. The DTI confirmed that in the event of a data supplier failing to respond to a request from a credit bureau to verify proof of payment, where this is received from a consumer (or their agent, attorney or the likes) within the seven day period, the credit bureau must remove the judgement from the record. To this end, we expect the current proactive engagement of the industry to discuss the operational implications of the new regulations to result in a solution(s) that will ensure efficacy for all parties in implementing processes that meet the requirements of the new regulations.
Experian has as its current priority the requirement to ensure compliance by 1 April, 2014. Our account managers will be engaging with you directly to discuss the impact on our consumer information data systems and related services.
In respect of the obligation which prohibits the credit bureaux to make available any information which qualifies for removal in terms of the Regulations, from 1 April 2014, we would like to inform you that to ensure that Experian is compliant in this regard and to allow for the relevant system changes to be implemented, we will suspend the processing of both scheduled and ad hoc batches between 28 March and 2 April 2014 (inclusive). As has been requested, we ask that should you anticipate that you will require batches to be processed during this time, that you submit your requests and input files by no later than 25 March 2014. Any batch requests received beyond 25 March will be processed for release after 2 April 2014.
Please do not hesitate to contact your account manager should you require any additional detail.