CRILC provides a timely window on any degradation of credit of a large borrower at a bank to the central bank and to other banks having the same entity as a borrower. The Asset Quality Review (AQR) that followed in 2015 relied heavily on CRILC data to cleanse the Augean stables of massive and unrecognised non-performing assets (NPAs) that have saddled our banks.
The credit information system, as a whole, has many such gaps which leave much scope for improvement. In my speech in July last year, I had also provided another example of how research based on data from credit registries can inform better policy-making.