Clean credit record for all credit amnesty

2014 / 03 / 01

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has recently published the Removal of Adverse Consumer Information and Information relating to paid up Judgments Regulations, 2014, which will come into effect on 1 April 2014.

This legislation is applicable to all consumers.

The four credit bureaus have 2 months to remove all the adverse credit information on record.

There is two parts to the credit amnesty removal process:

1. Once off removal which includes all adverse information, irrespective of whether the information relates to paid or unpaid debt. The removal process includes information such as:
   1. Negative classification regarding a consumer such as ‘default’, ‘delin- quent’ or ‘slow payer’
   2. Negative classification of enforcement action such as, ‘legal action’ ‘write-off’
   3. Negative status codes reflected on the payment profiles.
   4. Paid-up civil court judgments where the consumer has settled the capi- tal amount.

AND

• Ongoing removal requirements
  • Moving forward removal of all paid up judgments on an on-going basis and paid up adverse information will be removed.

The credit amnesty does not erase your debt. It seeks to encourage and create an incentive for consumers to re-pay their debt and avoid being blacklisted again.

As you can imagine this will mean relief to some and pandemonium to others.