Central Bank of Belize Makes Another Push for Credit Score System

In many countries around the world, credit scores are kept on every one of its citizens.  The credit scores are determined by how responsible you are in paying your bills, on whether your loans have had to be paid off through the court system, among other factors.  Previously, Belize has attempted to adopt this credit score system, but to no avail.  The Central Bank of Belize has recently launched another attempt at getting this done.

Kareem Michael, Governor, Central Bank of Belize: “We have relaunched that project. You know this is something that the Central Bank has been trying to implement for almost 10 years now and we are now going through the process of vendors, or at least drafting the terms of reference for vendor. The impact of this should be clear. You would have less information asymmetry. In other words a lender could tell exactly by looking at Mr. Vasquez, at Jules, and say whether or not his character is good and whether or not he is more inclined to pay than the other individual. And character is one of the five Cs of lending credit. So if you have a database, whether it is your light bill that you’re paying consistently, your water bill, whether you’re paying a loan at a commercial bank again with the highest level of confidentiality I will be able to tell whether this person this person has historically been a good payer and not a hard pay person and that helps in the financial intermediation part how quickly loans are dispersed by any financial institution.”