Credit activity increases

Credit bureaus create consumer credit profiles based on credit information received from credit providers, courts and utility service providers. The National Credit Regulator (NCR) regulates and monitors registered credit bureaus and the quality of their data.

Nomsa Motshegare, Acting CEO of the National Credit Regulator, said today that the credit bureau statistics reported for the quarter ended June 2011 indicate an increase in credit activity this quarter.

As at end of June 2011, credit bureaus had records for 18.84 million credit-active consumers, an increase of 1.3% over the 18.60 million of the previous quarter. Consumers classified in good standing increased by 69,000. This was a 0.3% decrease in proportion to the total number of credit-active consumers and a 0.2% increase year-on-year.

The number of consumers with impaired records increased by 174,000 to 8.80 million, a 0.3% increase quarter-on-quarter and 0.2% decrease year-on-year.

The number of accounts increased from 63.05 million in the previous quarter to 65.00 million, an increase of 3.1%. The number of impaired accounts increased by 213,000 to 16.47 million, from 16.26 million in the previous quarter.

A total of 249.70 million enquiries were made on consumer credit records, an increase of 25.3% quarter-on-quarter and 84.5% year-on-year. Enquiries initiated by consumers accounted for 12.18 million of all enquiries, an increase of 10.0% quarter-on-quarter and 18.5% year-on-year. Of the total enquiries made on consumer records, enquiries from banks and other financial institutions accounted for 67.9%, enquiries from retailers accounted for 7.9% and enquiries from telecommunication providers accounted for 15.3%. Banks and other financial institutions’ enquiries increased by 30.3% from the previous quarter, retailers increased by 2.2% and telecommunication providers increased by 47.0%.

The number of credit reports issued to consumers decreased to 90,531. Of the total credit reports issued, 82.7% (74,837) were issued without charge, and the remaining 17.3% (15,694) were issued with charge.

There were 6,437 disputes lodged on information held on consumer credit records for the quarter ended June 2011, which was an increase of 1.7% quarter-on-quarter and a decrease of 51.6% year-on-year.

Comparisons in this release - ‘quarter-on-quarter’ refers to a comparison between the June 2011 and March 2011 quarters, and ‘year-on-year’ refers to a comparison between the June 2011 and June 2010 quarters.