D. The credit reference bureau must forward all the relevant data you provide to the financial service provider that provided the information.

E.The financial service provider must investigate, review the relevant information, and report its findings back to the credit reference bureaus.

1. Lodge a complaint with the credit reference bureau highlighting what information you believe to be inaccurate.
2. Where possible provide documents that support your position, state the facts and explain why you dispute the information.
3. The credit reference bureau must investigate the disputed information within 10 days (Section 7 of the Amended CRB Act, 2010).

d. Information is confidential and is only shared between financial service providers and credit reference bureaus.

e. It is your obligation to check the information credit bureaus hold about you and keep track of your credit status and manage credit                              responsibly.

f. It is your obligation to make sure the information they hold about you is accurate

1. Information is used to make lending decisions. It is therefore important to check and confirm your credit status before submitting an application for a loan or credit,
2. It tells lenders how much credit you've accessed and whether you're seeking new sources of credit.
3. It gives lenders a broader view of your credit history than do other data sources, such as a bank's own customer data.

1. You can access your credit report through Walk in, Email, postal mail to a CRB
2. You are required to produce your National ID as identification, complete and submit a consumer credit report request form to your preferred CRB
3. You have the right to access your credit report from any credit reference bureau

A credit report contains:

1. Your full names and date of birth,
2. Identifications,
3. Your contact details
4. Your credit history including loans previously taken; returned cheques; repayment history; defaults or judgements from all regulated lenders.
5. With a good credit report, you are more likely to be considered for a loan or credit.

You can view your credit report for free anytime per year electronically (at the bureau or by email). For any subsequent hard copy reports, you are required to pay at a fee prescribed by the bureau.

a. A credit report helps lenders to predict how likely you are to repay a loan or credit and the ability to make payments when they are due.

b. Basing on your credit history, if you apply for a loan or credit, a lender will assess your loan to decide:

• Whether to extend the credit to you or not
• the repayment period of your loan
• Whether to give you a negotiated interest rate on the loan or not

It is a document that shows the history of a person/business with regard to credit and how it has been serviced.

a. To ensure lenders have the right information to make informed lending decisions

b. Clients for credit reference bureaux are banks, insurance companies, SACCOs, microfinance institutions and other financial institutions. This may also include non-financial institutions as prescribed by the Minister of Finance under the Credit Reference Bureau Act.

c. Collect data from financial service providers and to create an in depth reference report

As such, a credit reference bureau (CRB) is a firm that collects information from various sources and provides consumer credit information on individual consumers and businesses for a variety of uses.

A CRB provides information on individuals and businesses borrowing and bill paying habits

If there was a time that the customer defaulted, and the current balances of the loans the customer is owing.This information allows the financial institution to make an informed decision whether to lend to a particular customer or not and on what terms and conditions.

When a customer applies for a loan, the financial institution has an obligation to find out the credit history of the customer. To do this, the financial institution requests for loan history information from organizations called Credit Reference Bureaux.;  A credit reference bureau will issue a statement that  contains, among others, the number of loans one has, how the loans are being serviced, 

F. If the service provider finds the disputed information is inaccurate, it must amend the record/s and submit the updated disputed information to the bureaus and notify the credit reference bureau so that they can correct the information in your file.The credit reference bureau must give you the findings and remedial action taken on your dispute in writing (Complaints Handling Directive Section 12 (1))

H. If the dispute results in a change on your credit report, verify any amendments by checking your credit report.

I. If you are not happy with the credit reference bureau’s resolution, please complain to the Registrar of Financial

   Institutions (Reserve Bank of Malawi)

Note: **Always read the terms and conditions before signing any financial agreement or contract**