What is a Credit Bureau?
Why are the Services provided by a Credit Bureau Important?
What kind of information does the credit report contain?
How can the credit report on a physical and/or legal entity be obtained?
What are the sources of the Credit Bureau data?
Who are the members of the Credit Bureau?
How to become a member of the Credit Bureau?
How is ACRA planning to secure the safety and inaccessibility of data?
Can an unauthorized entity access the Credit Bureau database?
How does the Credit Bureau plan to collect data?

What is a Credit Bureau?
Credit Bureau is defined as a data bank that performs the collection, processing, maintenance and provision of records on consumers' payment patterns of various types of credit obligations.

Why are the Services provided by a Credit Bureau Important?

• Physical and legal entities receive the opportunity to create their own credit history and use it as an asset on to way to getting credit and utilizing various financial services
• Financial institutions/legal entities become more informed about the risk level of their partners and potential clients, both domestic and foreign, since they are now entitled to more information about their financial obligation repayment behaviors
• Physical and legal entities commence to manage their financial obligation the right way
• Individuals and financial institutions are protected from their partners/clients bad receivables and credit delinquencies, hence the risk of possible loss is diminished
• Everyone can use his/her credit history to perform credit transactions on privileged terms
• Each physical and legal entity gets the chance to utilize services provided by foreign financial institutions

What kind of information does the credit report contain?
The credit report contains information about the financial obligation performance behavior of physical and legal entities, including data on the proper fulfillment and/or delinquencies of financial obligations.

How can the credit report on a physical and/or legal entity be obtained?
Each physical and legal entity is entitled to check his/her own credit report.
If the legal entity and/or financial institution need to check someone up, it should

• have a legitimate business need
• sign a contract with the Credit Bureau
• get the data subject's written consent permitting the request of the report.

What are the sources of the Credit Bureau data?
The sources of credit history are member organizations of ACRA (banks, credit organozations institutions performing credit sales), that transfer data to the Credit Bureau.

Who are the members of the Credit Bureau?
All institutions that issue loans, give out grants and/or perform credit sales as well as state institutions, which can unilaterally provide data collected by them to the Credit Bureau.

How to become a member of the Credit Bureau?
The contract of service rendering must be signed between the Credit Bureau and the organizations. Then member organizations starts to provide data to the Credit Bureau. The membership to the Credit Bureau is voluntary is based on the contract.

How is ACRA planning to secure the safety and inaccessibility of data?
The security of data is carried out through the implementation of a security system which is based on a special equipment /firewall hardware/.
The on-line access is done by a safe encoded HTTPS connection.
Logs are kept for all activities performed in the system. To prevent unauthorized access the system is always monitored.

Can an unauthorized entity access the Credit Bureau database?
According to the legislation of the Republic of Armenia ACRA may not publicize any information on Data Subject without the consent from the Data Subject (with an exception of special cases prescribed by the law). Member organization may request for credit report from ACRA only if it holds written consent from the Data Subject. The consent may have a form of separate document or can be included in the content of credit application or contract of bank or credit organization.

How does the Credit Bureau plan to collect data?
The transfer of data will be fully automated via private computer network and Internet.