To comply with the new “Comprehensive Credit Reporting” (CCR) regulations, Australian banks will be required to hand over to Credit Reporting Agencies significant amounts of consumer credit data. The bank has recently notified your clients of this obligation.

Currently, credit reports, which credit agencies provide to lenders when they check on applicants, only held negative information such as missed payments of more than 60 days, and bankruptcies.

Under the new CCR regime, credit reports will contain significantly more consumer credit data, including monthly payment histories on loans and credit cards, where there will be red flags on any missed payments of more than 14 days.

This measure will give lenders access to a deeper, richer set of data enabling them to better assess a borrower’s true credit position and their ability to pay a loan.

The government late last year to announce that it will force the big banks to have their credit data ready for reporting by July 1, 2018. By the middle of 2019, the big banks are required to hand over all of their credit data.