Do You Know What Goes On Your Credit Report?

Your credit report is a record of your credit payment history compiled from banks and major financial institutions. Now, what’s a credit score? It’s simply a number in your credit report that indicates how likely an individual is to repay their debt.

Banks and lenders use your credit score to determine approval of your credit or loan application. Having a good credit score makes it easier for you to obtain credit and qualify for loans. And the credit report from the Credit Bureau Singapore (CBS) is supplemented with publicly available information such as bankruptcy data from the Insolvency and Public Trustee’s Office (IPTO).

So, the question is — what information is provided in your credit report to the banks and what has been recently added? If you’re not in on these yet, now is the time to find out.

Information displayed in your Credit Report

• Summary of your personal credit facilities, aggregate credit limits and indication of identity theft.
• Account Status History, which displays all the credit accounts you have with banks and financial institutions under CBS.
• Previous Enquiries show a list of various lenders that have searched on your information and your own searches of yourself.
• Default Records reflect lenders who uploaded a default in a credit account, the product type, loan amount defaulted, outstanding balances and repayment status.
• Bankruptcy Proceedings that provide information on the original order date and discharge date by IPTO.
• Narratives indicate involvement in Debt Management Programme (DMP) with Credit Counselling Singapore (CCS) and any amendments made to the information in the report.
• Credit Score is a numerical expression based on the past payment history of credit or loan accounts to determine one’s creditworthiness.
• Aggregate Outstanding Balances that are computed based on the amounts outstanding under your credit cards or other credit facilities.

New data elements made available in your Credit Report

New data elements had been added to further enhance the credit report provided to banks and consumers back in August 2018. Here’s a full lowdown on what these were, in case you were unaware:

1. Personal Details / Additional Identification

Basic personal details and additional identification details are used to verify information from the applicant. The display of the last 3 full address details (where available) are provided by the members of CBS. The full address details are only available in the Consumer’s Credit Report (not displayed to the Financial Institutions except for postal codes).

2. New property codes added

More detailed classification of property types have been added to the credit report. Categorising property types specifically will help provide more detailed identification of credit facility by property type. The new property types included in a consumer’s credit report are as follows:

3. Aggregated monthly instalments

The monthly instalments include the specific amount for each credit facility in your name provided by the Financial Institution(s) for the previous month and aggregated amounts for the preceding 5 months.

The reported monthly instalment amounts will only be shown in detailed Product Type breakdown for the most recently reported past month’s data from the Financial Institution(s), where the retrieval of this CBS report is done after the 15th of each month. If this CBS report is retrieved on or before the 15th of each month, the most recent month displayed will be reflected as data respectively.

For instance:

• If a consumer obtains the personal credit report on or before 15 June 2019, the reported monthly instalment amounts displayed would be up until the month of April 2019.
• If the same consumer obtains the personal credit report after 15 June 2019, the reported monthly instalment amounts displayed would be up until the month of May 2019.
• Monthly instalment amounts for Joint Accounts are reported as a full instalment amount due for a facility and does not reflect individually pro-rated or shared amounts for each joint borrower.

Breakdown of monthly instalments by banks and accounts

Aggregate Outstanding Balances for Preceding 5 months

This article is originally written and contributed by Credit Bureau Singapore.

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Credit Bureau (Singapore) Pte Ltd (CBS) is Singapore’s most comprehensive consumer credit bureau that has full-industry uploads from all retail banks and major financial institutions. CBS assists members in their credit approval process and protects their credit profile, by providing objective and factual information collated from members.

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