The national personal credit information system is doing a lot to minimize the risks of banks in Guangdong Province in the personal loan business.

 

Banks using the system there declined 1.14 percent in applications for personal loans and 35 percent of applications for credit cards in the first quarter of this year, the Guangzhou branch of the People's Bank of China (PBC), the central bank, found in a recent survey.

 

The rates were 0.93 percent and 3.94 percent respectively for the third quarter of last year, the branch said.

 

The banks checked data using the system for 61 percent of their personal loan business and 85 percent of their credit card service in the first quarter.

 

The system formally went into use in January.

 

Four State-owned commercial banks, 10 share-holding commercial banks, five local commercial banks and 27 rural credit cooperatives (RCCs) operating in Guangdong are now using the system.

 

By the end of March, commercial banks and RCCs in Guangdong had a total of 5,069 terminals for checking data with the system. They had made 1.08 million checks, 13 percent of the total checks nationwide.

 

The system, connecting commercial banks and some RCCs, included basic information and credit records for 486 million Chinese residents by the end of January, according to thr PBOC.

 

The system also saves time. The time for a Guangdong bank to process a personal loan application and a credit card application is now 3.9 days and 4 days respectively, compared with 4.9 days and 4.6 days before the system came into use.

 

Meanwhile, individuals in Guangdong are also asking about their own credit reports. The PBC's Guangzhou branch processed 180 such inquiries in the first five months of this year.

 

A manager with the consumer banking department of Guangdong Development Bank (GDB), who identified himself as Liu, said the system needs to be improved. GDB started to use it in June last year when the system was in the trial stage.

 

Some information from some banks is missing, he said, adding that GDB had placed all credit card information and 95 percent of personal loan information into the system.

 

GDB has measures in place to safeguard privacy in acquiring data from the system, in light of guidelines from the PBC, he said.

 

(China Daily June 21, 2006)