DUBAI, 20 June 2007 — Dubai Police and Emcredit have launched a service whereby the creditworthiness of individuals or companies will be assessed and reported to banks and other lenders. The service is expected to benefit businesses in the Emirate where the number of bounced checks is on the rise.
The agreement signed yesterday enables the police to share data with Emcredit, the UAE’s first independent credit bureau, and thus provide up-to-date information to clients. Called Embounce, it will enable lenders and other businesses to assess the risks associated with borrowers based on their past behavior.
Talking to the press during the signing, Dubai police chief Lt. Gen. Dhahi Khalfan Tamim blasted some banks in the UAE, saying they were only focusing on getting new clients and not caring about the quality of those clients.
“Some banks do not bother asking about a lender’s history. Some of them even open accounts for people who are on visit visas. They then give them facilities such as checkbooks which are misused,” he said.
Citing a recent example, Lt. Gen. Dhahi said that police had received complaints from several businesses in Dubai about a trader who issued checks which later bounced. “This man had been here for less than three months and was given checks. He bought goods worth hundreds of thousands of dirhams and disappeared, leaving these businesses in the lurch,” he said.
Another recent arrest by the police, he said, was of an Asian national who had written more than 15 bad checks. The man was arrested at the airport while trying to flee the country on a fake passport.
He pointed out that with the launch of Embounce, banks now have no excuses to lend money to individuals who have records of abusing such facilities. He questioned why a bank would lend money or give a checkbook to an individual who has a history of giving bad checks. He demanded that the Central Bank intervene in such cases.
Lt. Gen. Dhahi warned such banks who continue to do so, saying that they were wasting the police’s precious resources and he would refuse to handle such cases in the future. “I will ask such banks to go to the civil courts to get their money because they refused to heed or make use of this service,” he said.
On the other hand, Ali Ibrahim, board member and director of Emcredit, said the initiative will boost confidence and stability in the region’s financial industry. “Everyday, thousands of businesses make decisions based on an individual’s or a company’s credit history, making it vital for organizations to have access to accurate and comprehensive credit information that supports their decision-making capabilities,” he said.
