Managing finances often focuses on tracking spending, but many overlook the importance of monitoring debt. Frequent borrowing, especially from mobile money services like M-Shwari, Fuliza, and KCB-Mpesa or digital lending apps such as Tala, can result in being listed on the Credit Reference Bureau (CRB), damaging your overall credit score.
To stay on the safe side, it’s important to regularly check your CRB status to prevent future errors, ensure timely loan repayments, and improve your credit score and report.
While the CRB may seem intimidating to some, it plays a vital role in monitoring and collecting data on loans issued by lenders and creating reports. Lending institutions use these reports to determine whether one is eligible for a loan(s) or not.
The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) has licensed three CRBs to share, manage and collect information of lendees. They include:
•Metropol Corporation
•CreditInfo
•TransUnion
This article will look at checking your CRB status using the TransUnion bureau and breakdown of the process.
1. You are first required to pay for a Kshs 50 registration fee using Mpesa Paybill number 212121, enter your National ID number as your account number, and send.
2. After that, download the TransUnion Nipashe app on Google play store and input your details as follows; First name, Second Name, National ID number and phone number. Check the terms and conditions checkbox and click next.
3. TransUnion will then presents credit score and rating, loan accounts, credit report and clearance certificate options.
4. An activation code will be sent as an SMS to your phone to allow the system to ascertain that the number you gave belongs to you to facilitate the retrieval of your information.
5. To access your credit report, a prompt wil ask for your email address where the documents will be sent. Download the report and input the password that is your National ID number.
6. You will then receive your report ,complete with details of all loans on your credit history, those you have repayed and defaulted and the lender or reporting institution.
7. To get a clearance certificate, the same process applies input your email address, check email to download certificate, input password and you will have your certificate for free.
