The new company, 50% owned by SIMAH and 50% owned by South African firm PIC Solutions, is to be called Qarar (Arabic for 'decision'). It will be based in the UAE within the Tecom free zone, and is expected to become operational early in 2012.
Qarar's offerings will include services such as Credit Bureau Scoring consultancy and implementation support, scorecards, batch account management processing, hosted options for acquisitions and collections, analytical bureau reporting, training workshops, collection strategies, bounced cheques and fraud consulting.
A significant development
Nabil Al-Mubarak, GM of SIMAH, said: "SIMAH is expanding robustly in the market and thus we sought a partner capable of providing value added data services, with the breadth of expertise that could simultaneously accommodate the increased regulation and sophistication of the KSA consumer credit industry. This is one of the most significant developments in this market since the inception of the bureau itself."
SIMAH was originally established in 2002. It remains the only licensed credit bureau in Saudi Arabia and is jointly owned by the ten largest commercial banks in the country.
