CRIB to blacklist phone customers

New laws to benefit service providers:

Hiran H. SENEWIRATNE

All utility providers including telecommunication providers will be able to subscribe to the Credit Information Bureau of Sri Lanka (CRIB), its sources said.

This new development will come into force with the passing of the amendment to the Credit Information Bureau Act, which is now applicable only to banks, leasing and finance companies in the country.

With this proposed amendment utility providers especially mobile phone operators will be able to obtain financial stability and credit reports of their existing and would be customers, Assistant General Manager CRIB Janka Lakmal told the Daily News Business.

Lakmal said the objective of their endeavour is to collect financial details of customers.

Therefore, with the new amendment CRIBSL will be able to provide financial/credit information of customers and would be customers for utility companies for decision making purposes.

Under this new amendment to become law soon, mobile operators will be able to have a loyalty scheme where a defaulter of a bill will not be able to get another connection from any other telecommunication service provider.

It is a common practice in the mobile business for customers to default one cellular company and obtain subscription of another company.

Similarly other utility companies too will benefit from this scheme. Currently Sri Lanka’s telecommunication sector is having an exponential growth during the last few years.

Therefore, having a loyalty scheme would be able to benefit the entire industry, he said.

With the overgrowing demand on the services provided by bureau, it had a long-standing requirement in enhance the efficiency of credit information services to its member organisations.

As a result CRIB modernisation project is an initiative formulated to accomplish several business objectives within the period of next five years.