Verity journal

In our previous article, we explained how Malaysians are able to assess their financial status and health through CCRIS. We discussed how this can play an important role in helping Malaysians enhance the credibility of their financial health and in turn boost employment opportunities, bank loans or work contracts.

The CCRIS is similar to but not meant to be mistaken for a CTOS report.

CTOS and CCRIS are different but both helpful in indicating a person’s financial health.

Essentially, both reports indicate a person’s financial health through a history of their borrowings and repayments, though both do not feature any commentary within the reports and are not meant to be used as a blacklist. Instead, it can be a useful credibility tool in securing jobs and loans as it can be used to showcase how reliable a person is in managing debts and credit.

The first difference between these two credit reporting services lies in the nature of the organisations supplying the reports. For CCRIS, the reports are processed through a database managed by Bank Negara, and offered to applicants free of charge. CTOS reports are provided by a private company which offers basic reports free-of-charge but conducts more advanced reporting for a fee.

The other key difference is the way they gather credit information. According to the Star, the CTOS database maintains credit information of over 10 million individuals and two million companies in Malaysia. How do they gather these information?

Based on the table above, you can see that CCRIS gathers data through official reports by participating financial institutions while CTOS has to filter information from public records in order to produce its reports.

So what is the recommendation here? Should Malaysians check both reports? Yes! Since both reports are freely available, Malaysians should ensure that there is no uncertainty when it comes to their own financial health as these reports can help to flag issues or suspicious activities such as outstanding credit, bankruptcy and credit application status of the past 12 months.

Don’t be blindsided the next time you apply for a new job or a loan for a car. Pay close attention to your credit checks so that you can always put your best foot forward in any endeavor that you wish to undertake.

If you want to learn more about self-checks and how it can benefit you in the long run, follow us on www.verityintel.com to stay updated!