Warsaw, September 25, 2019

On September 25, during this year’s IT FUTURE AWARDS 2019 Gala, which took place in Warsaw, CRIF sp.z o.o. received two awards in the IT industry solution category - the title of IT Leader 2019 and the main prize in the online voting.

IT FUTURE AWARDS events have been regularly taking place since 2014 and are aimed at selecting and giving awards to the best and the most innovative solutions, products and technological services in the IT industry. This year’s competition was divided into 18 categories, and the winners were selected in two stages: through online voting, followed by the jury's deliberations.

CRIF put forward the Credit Check Information Exchange System (SWI) in the IT inter-branch solution category as an innovative and first on the market data exchange solution in the financial sector. SWI gives access to a unique set of information, enabling the most comprehensive assessment of the borrower's creditworthiness and protection of debtors against spiraling debt.

“Considering the current market trend of selling overdue debts to debt collection companies, we have noticed a market gap related to the lack of access to this information at a later date. This is due to the fact that in credit information bureaus as well as in CRIF Credit Check there is no information about what is happening with the debtor at a later stage of the debt collection process” – state Bartosz Pundyk, CRIF Sales Director.

At the same time, Poland is becoming a country where increasing numbers of consumers 'live on credit', and financial sector companies must devote more time and resources to more accurately determining consumer credit risk. Hence the idea of providing an information exchange platform for financial institutions.

The basic premise of the Credit Check Information Exchange System (SWI) is obtaining information from financial institutions and companies in the debt management sector on current liabilities and current address details of the debtor.

The platform has two aspects:

- as far as the financial sector is concerned, companies such as banks or lending institutions receive access to the portfolios of debt collection companies and can verify the financial status of a given consumer based on this information;

- as far as debt collection companies are concerned, they can accelerate the debt collection process by accessing the most current debtor data and speed up the repayment process.

The Credit Check Information Exchange System shows that there is room in Poland for companies from many sectors to cooperate and share information for the benefit of everyone.

On the one hand, when it comes to companies, there is a more effective assessment of creditworthiness or the ability to access the most current data. On the other hand, consumers have the option of getting out of the debt spiral.

The creation of the SWI platform is the result of several months of work by the CRIF Sp. z o.o. team, in particular, the Project and Product, Sales, and Legal teams.