Credit Bureau - Would Ja benefit from having one?
I believe that Ja. would benefit from having a Credit Bureau for a number of reasons:
1) Increased security & regulation of online transactions
2) Increased regulation of financial transactions in general, which would lead to:
i) Decreased interest rates
ii) Greater access to financing
With regard to the first item, Jamaica would definitely benefit a central repository for a persons financial identification and track record. As for as the ID. We need a bonafide means of identifiying an individual, a security id or login name is you may. This applies to a lot of areas of application, not the least of which being or electorial system. However, I will constrain my argument to financial matters. At present the name of address of an individual is almost the only means an instituition has to identify a person. If the person does not have passport it makes it even worse and getting a bogus driver's license easy so using one as ID doesn't mitigate the problem very much.
Once we have that we can associate it with a persons track record. It would aid in identifying the person online (secure sites of course). And it could be universially applied. Meaning that institutions could go online and know which individual they are dealing with.
It is the same with transactions. Right now institution have to go through a lot to figure out one's credit worthness. They must do a lot of investigation to figure out if one has been in fraud or has a lot of debts. This is expensive for them and inconvinient to us. We have have to supply a lot more colateral and documentation. If we had a credit bureau then the instituition could just get the info from them. Less expense, less time, less hassle.
The direct result is that interest rates would go down. If you have any doubt check the recent exchange betwen the JMA and the commerical banks of Ja about the disparity in lending rate. One of the retorts of the bank is the difficulty of accessing and individuals credit worthiness.
Financing would also be more available to individuals. With the walls of collateral broken down people, even of middle to lower economic class, with a good track record of meeting there financial responsibility could have greater access to funds. They would be rewarded for they frugality rather than being asked to "prove it" with collateral by lending instituitions.
A credit bureau would grease the wheels of financial machinery in Jamaica especially against the background of increased electronic transactions. It would open up a world of increased access to financing through cyberspace. More money less paper.
Life is not measured by the number of breathes you take but by the moments that take your breath away.