The General Assembly of the Egyptian Credit Bureau (I-Score) has approved its 2020 financial statements, which show a 17% growth in profits, which were estimated at EGP 147m compared to EGP 126m in 2019. Mohamed Kafafi, Chairperson and Managing Director of the company, said that the General Assembly approved the decision by the company's Board of Directors to distribute EGP 100m to shareholders. He said that the company has signed protocols with several ministries, under the auspices of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE), to enquire about electronic commercial records. This includes a cooperation protocol with the Internal Trade Development Agency (ITDA), and comes as part of the Egyptian Government and the CBE's efforts towards digital transformation and financial inclusion He pointed out that a cooperation protocol was also signed between the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology to provide data for government agencies. This is in addition to another cooperation protocol signed with the General Administration of Traffic Information Systems to register car bans electronically. A connection was also created with the Ministry of Justice, to exchange bankruptcy data and preventive bankruptcy electronically. During the coming period, a decision will be made to create a link with the General Authority for Investment and Free Zones (GAFI) to issue certificates of company incorporation. This would also allow for enquires about partners before issuing certificates of incorporation. I-Score's three-year strategy, covering the period from 2020-2022, keeps pace with the requirements of the banking market, in particular, and other financial sectors. At the same time, the company is looking to create awareness on the credit culture. Moreover, I-Score intends to prepare a system that allows banks to enquire about deaths, based on the protocol signed with the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development and the CBE. The company is currently working on providing a "Behavioural Scoring" product for customers, as part of the issued third edition of rules governing the provision of mobile payment services. This is one of the most important products that will contribute significantly to financial inclusion and digital transformation initiatives. It will also add value to the many products that I-Score has provided for this purpose. I-Score has also been operating the Egyptian Collateral Registry (ECR) since March 2018, under the supervision of the Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA). This has improved Egypt's ranking in the Doing Business report, especially the Getting Credit Index in 2020, where it ranked 65th compared to 90th in the 2017 report. It is noteworthy that a total of 85,938 declarations were registered on the ECR in April 2021, with a total value of EGP 777bn. The number of entities involved in ECR services reached 84 credit grantors. Furthermore, I-Score's database has grown to contain data from 20 million individual credit customers and 450,000 small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in April 2021. The number of subscribers to the company's services for exchanging credit information has reached 950, including banks, companies, and microfinance associations.
