The Credit Information Corporation (CIC), the country’s public credit registry and repository of credit information, recently onboarded Grab Financial Services Philippines, Inc. (part of Grab Financial Group) as one of its accessing entities (AEs).
AEs are financial institutions authorized by the CIC to access borrowers’ credit reports from its database. Similar to other AEs, Grab Financial Services now has ready access to borrowers’ comprehensive credit reports, which will expedite the process of granting loans to their consumers.
“Given its diverse client base, the onboarding of Grab Financial Services as an AE to the CIC is a very welcome development. As an AE, Grab Financial will be able to harness the CIC database, which now contains 31.4 million unique data subjects and 110.5 million contracts as of February 2022, in their credit-decisioning activities for the benefit of their borrowers,” President and CEO Atty. Ben Joshua A. Baltazar shared.
Grab and Grab Financial Group
Grab, a leading superapp in Southeast Asia, has millions of users in the Philippines. It offers everyday value to consumers through a wide range of services such as mobility, food, grocery, and package deliveries, as well as financial services.
Through Grab Financial Group, Grab also offers simple, transparent, and flexible financial products to its driver-, delivery- and merchant-partners. These include offline and online loans, purchase financing, fuel cards for driver-partners, as well as working capital loans for merchants.
On the consumer side, its PayLater service allows consumers to finance their purchases and pay for Grab services a month later in one monthly bill. GrabPay, its e-wallet and payments service, is both convenient and rewarding for consumers as they can earn GrabRewards points for their purchases using the service. These points can then be used to avail of discounts, and deals on Grab-related services and other merchant partners.
New credit report pricing scheme for financial institutions
The PCEO also encouraged its accessing entities to pre-purchase credit reports now before the effectivity of the new pricing scheme increasing the retail access from PHP 15 to PHP 30.00, effective 01 April 2022 onwards.
“Now that some areas in the country eased the restrictions to Alert Level 1, lenders should rely on the CIC Credit Report as the reputational collateral of the MSME sector to lower the cost of credit and help them bounce back and grow their businesses amid the pandemic,” Atty. Baltazar ended.
In addition to Grab Financial Services, other newly onboarded accessing entities of the CIC for February 2022 are Profarmers Rural Banking Corporation and Cooperative Bank of Nueva Vizcaya. The list of current AEs can be found in the CIC website.
For financial institutions interested to become an AE, they may send an email to [email protected] and follow the official Facebook page of CIC for issuances and updates.