India credit info bureau to maintain fraud database

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Credit Information Bureau (India) Ltd plans to develop a repository of financial frauds in order to help lenders become more prudent in the lending procedures, top officials said on Wednesday.

Fraud reporting in the financial services industry is currently done to the Reserve Bank of India as a due-dilligence measure, while CIBIL's data can be used pro-actively by lenders, Chief Operating Officer, Terry McCafferty said.

"There will be a database of fraud instances and as someone is applying for credit, you can check that database and check if that person has been convicted of a fraud with another financial institution, to help prevent huge a loss," she said.

"Once you incur the loss, it'll be little bit late".

CIBIL currently maintains a database of 85 million individuals and plan to scale it upto 150-200 million as more banks share their credit data.

"As of now, most data are urban-centric but its a good beginning," Managing Director, Arun Thukral said.

The company launched its commercial operations in April and a quick observation of the data indicated high leveraging among Indian individual borrowers.