this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
20 points (91.7% liked)

Europe

8485 readers
1 users here now

News/Interesting Stories/Beautiful Pictures from Europe 🇪🇺

(Current banner: Thunder mountain, Germany, 🇩🇪 ) Feel free to post submissions for banner pictures

Rules

(This list is obviously incomplete, but it will get expanded when necessary)

  1. Be nice to each other (e.g. No direct insults against each other);
  2. No racism, antisemitism, dehumanisation of minorities or glorification of National Socialism allowed;
  3. No posts linking to mis-information funded by foreign states or billionaires.

Also check out [email protected]

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
20
Do any credit reporting agencies in Europe give consumers control over creditors access? (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
15 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

In the US, consumers can freeze their credit worthiness records and receive a code. When the records are frozen, the only orgs that can access the records are those already doing business with the consumer. If a consumer wants to open up a new account, they share the code with the prospective creditor who uses it to see the credit report.

So the question is, how are access controls on credit histories done in various EU nations? Do any use unlock codes like the US, or is it all trust based?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Someone who knows better please correct me, but I don't think there is such thing as a credit score in the UK (not EU now I know, sadly). I don't think there is one in the Netherlands either.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

I don’t mean to imply anything about scoring, but certainly there must be some kind of mechanism to expose bad debtors to lenders.

In Belgium, there are no private credit bureaus but there is a central bank. Belgian banks are obligated to report loan defaults and cash transactions to the central bank, and creditors are obligated to check the central bank’s records. Consumers have no way to control creditors access to their records in the central bank. It seems to be trust based. The central bank apparently trusts that a creditor is checking a consumer’s file in connection with an application for credit by the consumer.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

There's definitely the bureau kredietregistratie in the Netherlands.

As far as I know you can't "freeze" it like you describe, though you can request information on what is stored about you and who accessed it. It also costs money to run a check, and credit history doesn't go back more than five years, doesn't include your mortgage unless you missed paying that for longer than three months, and doesn't include debts less than €250.

Edit: also just checked, but the information is only shared with parties that share credit history with the BKR. I think that means that it's basically frozen by default, i.e. only parties that are actually about to do business with you can access it, but I'm not entirely sure. They'll at least have to do some kind of business, i.e. not be a generic data broker.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Over here it's not necessary for a person to restrict access because access to the credit records is restricted to banks, allowed only when a bank is asked by you explicitly for a credit, and all loans must be done only by banks. So it's basically impossible for anybody to access it outside very specific circumstances initiated by you.