L-R: Vice President, Dun &Bradstreet Technologies & Data Services Pvt. Limited, Sunil Agithakaliya;
Head, Retail Banking Credit Risk Nigeria & West Africa ,Standard Chartered Bank, Mrs. Grace Ademola; MD/CEO,CRC Credit Bureau Limited, Mr. Tunde Popoola; Managing Director/CEO, Dun & Bradstreet/ Worldwide. Mr. Miguel Llenas; Chief Technology Officer, CRC Credit Bureau Limited, Mr. Ademola Adesalu and Head, Sales & Marketing, CRC Credit Bureau Limited, Mrs. Peggy Chukwuma-Nwosu; at the Financial Breakfast Seminar organized by the CRC Credit Bureau Limited in Association with Dun & Bradstreet in Victoria Crown Plaza Hotel, Lagos recently

CRC Credit Bureau Limited in collaboration with Dun & Bradstreet has launched into the market a new device called “CRC Monitors and Alerts Service’; with the sole aim of providing users who key in into it the proactive means of constantly monitoring their credit portfolio.

The service is received as an e-mail notification, with details of changes on loan records and details of searches / inquiries made on the customers.

At a well-attended ceremony to launch the product, it was revealed that the Monitors and Alerts package will provides individual subscribers with daily email notifications on any new loan record submitted to CRC by its members on the subject. And to also changes on critical loan performance components of existing loans.

Meanwhile, at a time most deposit money banks in the country today are still smarting from the losses incurred over the years as a result of toxic debts, experts have suggested useful measures by which the banks can avoid such pitfalls in 2017.

Speaking at a public forum organised by CRC Credit Bureau Limited in association with Dun and Bradstreet Credit Bureau Limited in Lagos, a cross-section of experts drawn from the financial service and related sectors observed that most of the banks were exposed to a lot of risks, especially oil and gas, whose revenue projections have been badly affected by the economic crunch.

According to ‘Tunde Popoola, Managing Director/CEO, CRC Credit Bureau Limited, the challenges confronting most of the banks is how to reduce their risk portfolio given the bad debts they incurred these past years, especially at a time they are have more risk assets.

Thankfully, he said, the CRC Credit Bureau has been able to develop fool-proof measures that can help the banks contain the incidence of bad debts.

At the risk of sounding immodest, Popoola said what banks need to do to reduce the incidence of bad debts is to be more circumspect in the way they spread risks.

“Most of the toxic debts within the banking sector happened because they were done without proper due diligence analysis as it were. But that can be taken care of with our products and services like I-CON Plus, which can help to build a good credit industry.”

Echoing similar sentiment, Mrs. Peggy Chukwuma-Nwosu, Head of Sales and Marketing at CRC Credit Bureau Limited, who gave a presentation on CRC Credit Monitors: Useful Tools to better manage Customer Loans, disclosed that the different products developed by her organisation rsets on the wing of technology.

Specifically, she said, the CRC Prospector, which is one of her company’s offerings, “Provides alternative contact information of customers you can no longer reach.”

The lead speaker, Mr. Miguel Llenas, who sits atop Dun and Bradstreet Credit Bureau Limited, a Dominican Republic-based firm with over 170 years’ experience in credit management, spoke on the theme of the ‘Mitigating Emerging Credit Risks in the Nigeria economy in 2017.’

Nigeria, he noted sadly, was passing through its worst economic woes in years because of her overreliance on a monoculture economy. “The crash in the price of crude globally, things in recent times, have gone terribly bad for the economy,” he said.

While lamenting that most banks in the country today were technically in distress because they chose to jettison core banking regulations, Llenas said: “Most Nigerian banks are not involved in serious lending, especially to the retail market.”

Raising some posers, Llenas, who boost of over three decades experience as a credit expert said: “Do banks really need a credit bureau? How do you extend credit to customers if you don’t use credit report?”

Most of the banks in the country today, he insisted, “Have swift from lending to survival mode. Most of the banks are risk averse. This is partly why the economy is not moving forward.”

Speaking further, Llenas, who has traverse over 40 countries as part of his commitment to help grow the capacity of credit bureaus, stressed that Nigerian banks have the potential to drive the economy by lending to the critical sectors, especially the retail market rather than the high end market in order to enable them better manage risks when they occur.

“With credit monitoring, and a credit score, banks and lenders alike can easily predict the future. The use of credit report has to be a powerful tool if well harnessed,” he maintained.