Creditinfo invited by IFC to work to expand access to credit
IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, and Bank Al-Maghrib, the Central Bank of Morocco, organised the 5th international symposium to train African and MENA central banks and financial regulators on financial infrastructure and risk management that will help smaller businesses gain access to finance and boost economic growth.
Creditinfo, by invitation of IFC, along with other invitees including senior personnel from Central Banks, lenders’ association, doors, MFI associations, Private Credit Bureau, banking supervisors and policy makers met towards the end of September in Rabat, Morocco. Representatives were principally from Africa and the Middle East, but also from Central Asia, particularly Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan and a few participants were from Asia, including Indonesia and Philippines. The four-day event brought together some 40 international experts and 150 attendees from 35 central banks and 50 countries.
Mr. Paul Randall, Director of Business Development for Creditinfo along with Mr. Ali Faroun, Director of the Consumer Relations and Market Conduct Department from the Palestine Monetary Authority (PMA) were amongst the expert trainers asked by IFC to share experiences and lessons learned in establishing financial infrastructure and advanced risk management. Mr. Faroun delivered a case study showing how, supported by Creditinfo, it has developed bureau scores used. In addition, Mr. Randall explained how credit reports are just the basic service distributed by a credit reporting service and how more sophisticated tools and Value Added Services, such as bureau score, anti fraud systems, alerts, tracing, previous searches, etc. can support lenders in all the credit cycle phases.
During the four days, trainees were divided into groups to work on exercises to put into practice the concepts covered by the trainers and to discuss case studies presented.
Some of the key objectives were to:
- Perform a 360 degrees review of modern financial infrastructure, credit risk assessment tools, technologies, in the retail/SME/MFI sectors.
- Illustrate, through sessions led by specialist trainers, the best international practices, experiences, success cases, and benefits of modern retail risk management techniques.
- Highlight the benefits of financial infrastructure building for lenders, borrowers, countries economy.
- Enable participants to enhance their risk management skills relevant to all phases of the credit cycle.
- Transfer know-how, experience through groups’ workshops.
- Highlight roles, responsibilities, duties, operational perimeters for regulators and PCBs.
- Analyze the importance of legal framework for collateral registries and credit bureaus.
- Foster the creation of an international network and the sharing of experiences, in the domain of risk management, and increasing cross-fertilization and harmonization among different markets.
Spearheaded by IFC, the agenda was very well organised, delivering high quality, relevant and practical training, ensuring the overall event was hugely successful. This was supported by the course review feedback forms, on a scale 0-5, over 90% of participants rated the training 4 or 5 (with 5 being the highest).
Other attendees from Creditinfo invited by IFC to attend the international symposium included Mr. Reynir Grétarsson (CEO Creditinfo Group hf), Ms. Dirce Varela (CEO, Creditinfo Cape Verde) and Mr. Edwin Urasa (Business Development Manager, Creditinfo Tanzania).
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IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is the largest global development institution focused exclusively on the private sector. Working with private enterprises in about 100 countries, we use our capital, expertise, and influence to help eliminate extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity. In FY14, we provided more than $22 billion in financing to improve lives in developing countries and tackle the most urgent challenges of development. For more information, visit www.ifc.org.
Group Photo from the IFC Conference, Rabat, Morocco
