Credit cards and home loans make it easier for you to spend on important or much needed expenses of your everyday life as well as once in a lifetime events such as medical procedures, home renovation, child’s higher education or marriages. For the average middle class Pakistani, shelling out a huge sum all at once is not possible thus such financial services can be of great use.
Meet eCIB
But before you can avail any of these services, you have to apply for them and then you are subject to certain checks only after which you are granted a new credit card or a personal loan. This is exactly where Electronic Credit Investigation Beaurau or eCIB comes into play. eCIB is a regulatory authority set up by State Bank of Pakistan, SBP. What this authotity does is maintain a database of all creditors from all financial institutions in the country. For all banks and other financial institutions it is mandatory to upload creditor’s details including all negative as well as positive aspect of any creditor’s history such as late payments, clean history, settlements, defaults etc. Based on the information provided by the financial institute, the eCIB prepares a report known as eCIB report or more commonly credit report. This report however doesn’t contain any grading or rating. The report also includes your personal information such as your CNIC number, address, date of birth, name and other relevant details.
How Does A Bank Use The eCIB Report?
Each bank has a different set of criterion to gauge whether an individual’s request for a personal loan or a new credit card should be approved. There are different threshold and risk levels that a bank might have. For e.g where one bank might choose to refuse your request on a single delayed payment, another one could’ve a risk level of upto 3 delayed payments in your credit history before you can be refused for a financial service’s approval. Also there are different things that are taken into consideration while offering you a specific amount of loan or a credit card with a certain credit limit. It could also be the status of your current due payments on other loans you might have taken or if you have one or more credit cards already then your outstanding amount could also be taken into consideration before issuing you a new one. For example, you took a loan of 70,000 for 1 year with a monthly repayment schedule but failed to pay 3 installments on time within the monthly due date. These late payments along with the full history of your payment schedule will be mentioned in the eCIB report making it easier for banks to gauge if you can be allowed to borrow further money or not. On the other hand, it can also reflect your positive status of timely payments on previous financial borrowing services and approve your request. Smartchoice.pk offers multiple financial services where you can also apply for a new credit card.
What’s The Function Of eCIB Report?
The purpose that the eCIB report serves is that whenever any individual applies for a credit card or a personal loan of any kind, the financial institute that has to issue the desire credit card or loan, checks into the eCIB database for the relevant report and checks for a clean history. In the occurrence that the bank finds a clean history, the individual who has put up a request is issued the relevant financial service. However if the case turns out to be the opposite, then the financial institution offering the loan has a right to reject the request.
What Should Be Done To Maintain Clean eCIB Report?
It is extremely important to maintain a clean credit history so that your eCIB report turns out to be positive if you ever need to apply for a new credit card or personal loan. Failure to do so might render you unable to avail such financial services from any financial institute. To ensure that you’ve a clean credit history, you should always file your income tax, pay your loan installments on time as well as paying credit card bills within the grace period. Not only does it save you from monetary loss in the shape of fines, late payment charges etc. It also keeps your credit history healthy and open to future financial opportunities.
