Increased credit activity reported

Credit bureaux create consumer credit profiles based on credit information received from credit providers, courts and utility service providers.

As at end of June 2011, credit bureaux had records for 18.84 million credit-active consumers, an increase of 1.3 percent over the 18.6 million of the previous quarter. Consumers classified in good standing increased by 69 000. This was a 0.3 percent decrease in proportion to the total number of credit-active consumers and a 0.2 percent increase year-on-year.

The number of consumers with impaired records increased by 174 000 to 8.8 million, a 0.3 percent increase quarter-on-quarter and 0.2 percent decrease year-on-year.

The number of accounts increased from 63.05 million in the previous quarter to 65 million, an increase of 3.1 percent. The number of impaired accounts increased by 213 000 to 16.47 million, from 16.26 million in the previous quarter.

Enquiries up by a quarter

A total of 249.7 million enquiries were made on consumer credit records, an increase of 25.3 percent quarter-on-quarter and 84.5 percent year-on-year. Enquiries initiated by consumers accounted for 12.18 million of all enquiries, an increase of 10 percent quarter-on-quarter and 18.5 percent year-on-year. Of the total enquiries made on consumer records, enquiries from banks and other financial institutions accounted for 67.9 percent, enquiries from retailers accounted for 7.9 percent and enquiries from telecommunication providers accounted for 15.3 percent. Banks and other financial institutions' enquiries increased by 30.3 percent from the previous quarter, retailers increased by 2.2 percent and telecommunication providers increased by 47 percent.

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

There were 6437 disputes lodged on information held on consumer credit records for the quarter ended June 2011, which was an increase of 1.7 percent quarter-on-quarter and a decrease of 51.6 percent 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.