Press release - Central Credit Register: key data

In accordance with the draft Central Credit Register Act, which is undergoing the legislative procedure, the Bank of Slovenia will establish a Central Credit Register (CCR), which will be a centralised national database of the debt of private individuals and business entities. The register is being established for the purpose of improving the processes of assessing and managing lenders’ credit risks, encouraging policies and measures for responsible lending and sustainable borrowing, preventing excessive borrowing by both private individuals and business entities, and aiding in the performance of the Bank of Slovenia’s tasks (risk management, macroprudential supervision, administration of monetary policy, maintenance of financial stability, etc.).

The establishment of a central credit register in Slovenia also follows actions in European banking. In conjunction with the central banks of the euro area and certain central banks of countries that are not members of the euro area, in 2011 the European Central Bank launched the project to establish a dataset with detailed information on individual bank loans in the euro area, the Analytical Credit Datasets (AnaCredit). It will combine new data and existing national credit registers into a harmonised database to support central banking functions, such as decision-making in monetary policy and macroprudential supervision. It will also improve the cross-border comparability and interoperability of credit risk databases.
 
In addition to banks and savings banks, other lenders such as firms whose principal line of business is the conclusion of loan agreements, the provision of finance leasing or factoring services, lenders providing services of real estate leasing, payment service providers, the Bank Asset Management Company, the Housing Fund of the Republic of Slovenia, the Eco Fund, and the Ministry of Finance’s Public Payments Administration as the asset manager for the government’s single treasury account are all required to report data to the Central Credit Register. The aforementioned reporting entities will simultaneously be members of the information exchange system, which means that they will be able to access all the data exchanged in the system. In addition to the aforementioned reporting entities, other lenders providing consumer lending services will be able to join the information exchange system, either as mandatory system members (who submit data to the system and will be able to access the same dataset as the members), or by opting for limited inclusion in the system. In this event they will not be required to submit data, and will only be able to access a limited selection of the data being exchanged in the system.

In the establishment of the information exchange system the Bank of Slovenia will focus in particular on the security aspect, i.e. on mechanisms to prevent the potential abuse of data. Here the starting point is the best practice that the Bank of Slovenia has learned from SISBON, the existing information exchange system for retail borrowing, which will be further strengthened in certain areas. Whenever a new member is in the process of joining the information exchange system, there will be an enhanced audit of the fulfilment of information security requirements and standards. A full audit trail will be provided within the framework of the information exchange system, so that at any moment it is possible to determine when the data of an individual or business entity was accessed, by whom, and for what purpose.

All individuals and business entities about whom data is collected and exchanged in the system will be able to find out which data has been collected on them, and by whom, when and for what purpose it has been accessed. The draft law also envisages fines for members of the system and their responsible persons that fail to meet the prescribed technical and security requirements, or use data contrary to the purposes set out in the law.