Goddy Egene
The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of CRC Credit Bureau, Mr. Tunde Popoola, has said the firm has improved access to credit for consumers and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
Speaking ahead of the company’s 10th anniversary celebration slated for December 11, 2019, Popoola said CRC was licenced and commenced full live operations in 2009.
CRC set for itself the vision, “to set standard for financial empowerment and informed decision making,” and a mission “to deliver innovative products and services that enable our stakeholders to make informed decisions and build credible profiles that enhance access to credit for strategic growth,” he said.
According to him, the company set as its core objective to generate and supply reliable and accurate credit information on borrowers in the consumer and corporate sectors for permissible purposes only.
“Since we commenced live operations in 2009, CRC has never looked back. In June 2009, when CRC went live, six commercial banks submitted 1,525,228 credit records but only 154,030, representing about 10 per cent passed validation process due to the bad quality of the data. Today, CRC has over 1,300 institutions with about 30 million credit records successfully processed. We have entered strategic partnerships with the likes of the Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO) to power our credit scoring solution. FICO is the pioneer and global leader in credit scoring solutions. We partnered with Nova Credit, to make it possible for Nigerian emigrants to the United States to access their data in our repository in Nigeria,” he said.
Popoola explained that the partnership enables creditworthy Nigerian newcomers to gain access to credit opportunities previously unavailable to them because of a lack of credit history in the United States.
“ The whole idea is to assist more than 16,000 Nigerians who move to the US each year to pursue new opportunities to settle down faster and have access to credit to continue their lives and lifestyles. The newcomers often encounter a common challenge when they reach the United States: access to credit, which is fundamental to basic comfort and livelihood from getting an apartment lease to obtaining a cell phone plan or securing student loan. We intend on expanding this partnership to also include Canada, another choice destination for Nigerian immigrants in the coming few months.
