While the comparative advantage of banks in intermediating financial resources hinges on their being able to enjoy economies of scale and scope in acquiring and processing information in the first place, a relevant issue in this context is whether this information is being put to optimal use for managing risks, both at the level of individual banks and also at the aggregate level.
Although it is early days to assess the effectiveness of the institutional mechanism provided by credit information bureaus for the pooling of  2  BIS Review 69/2007  critical borrower information for common use within certain important safeguards, the importance of more intensive and extensive use of information hardly needs to be overemphasized.