Early this week, Vietnam Credit Information JSC (PCB) has officially submitted the dossier to The State Bank of Vietnam for the Certificate of elibility for credit information operation.

The dossier of PCB was submitted after many years of preparation for the project.

Since 2007, this project was developed with the support and consultancy of International Finance Corporation (IFC - a member of World Bank). In July 2010, PCB was officially launched with 11 commercial banks (BIDV, Vietcombank, Vietinbank, ACB, Techcombank, VIB, DongABank, VPBank, ABBank, SCB and Sacombank) as its shareholders.

With the goal of building a world class private credit bureau, in July 2010, PCB has selected a strategic partner to join in the project. CRIF (the world leading provider of credit information solution, based in Italy) became PCB’s strategic partner, owning 24.73% of the shares. Thus, CRIF would transfer its entire technical system for project implementation.

The process of dossier completion and project preparation was accelerated after the Government issued the Decree that created a legal framework for credit information activities in Vietnam, together with the Circular from The State Bank of Vietnam as a detail guideline. It should be noted that since the legal framework was created (Feb 2010), PCB has been the only one who apply for the Certificate and likely to become the first private company operating in this sector.

Nguyen Duc Ngoc, Chief Executive Officer of PCB, said that the goal of the project is to build and develop an agency that provides reliable credit information of individuals and organizations, supporting for financial institutions in risk management, and also helping small and medium enterprises as well as private sector accessing to credit due to a higher level of information transparency.

If the project is approved and starts operation, it will create a focal point of information connectivity between lenders and borrowers and promote competition in quality of credit information service.