Following the establishment of a quality management system (QMS), the country’s central credit registry earned a certification from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
The Credit Information Corp. (CIC) said in a recent statement that the BSI (British Standards Institution) Group Philippines Inc. issued its ISO 9001:2015. The BSI Group is a founding member of ISO.
To acquire the certification, CIC passed the 2-stage audit, which verified how its QMS meets applicable statutory, regulatory and contractual requirements.
CIC Senior Vice President for Business Development Communications Aileen L. Amor-Bautista said they “persistently worked” on the ISO-QMS certification in 2020.
“This is a testament to the commitment of our workforce to strengthen and improve our products and services and to go beyond our stakeholders’ expectations,” Amor-Bautista said.
The ISO certification covers the QMS of credit information services such as the operational processes of credit data management, special accessing entity accreditation, online dispute resolution and capacity building. In addition, risk management system, operational planning and control, administration and facilities, performance evaluation and internal audit procedures were also evaluated.
The BSI Group also “commended the coverage of CIC’s QMS which includes identified applications and horizontals, as well as the internally-developed systems supporting its operations. The certifying body also cited how the credit registry’s employees and process owners were “highly aware” of the need to be on the same page with the QMS manual.
In developing CIC’s QMS, Amor-Bautista said that the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP) took part by providing technical assistance, noting that the institution helped the credit registry in securing the ISO certification.
“The journey of learning and implementing the requirements for ISO certification has been very challenging for us as we have to do most of the tasks remotely due to Covid-19, but DAP has been encouraging and helpful every step of the way,” Amor-Bautista said.
DAP President and CEO Engelbert C. Caronan said that CIC was among the 12 beneficiary agencies of the DAP Government Quality Management Program. “We are very elated because in less than a year after we had the meeting with the agency—that was March 2020—CIC has already received its ISO certification,” he added.
Last year, the credit registry also established a QMS task force and attended online training courses on QMS requirements and documentation and process streamlining, among others.
CIC is subject to surveillance audits in the next two years as part of the three-year validity of the certification.
“From here forward, our stakeholders can expect an even more reliable and comprehensive credit information system,” the CIC official said.
As of end-2020, the CIC database contains 85 million contract data from 557 financial institutions.
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