South AfricaNational Credit Act, registration and duties of credit bureaux
National Credit Act 34 of 2005, ss. 43, 68, 70 and 72 (credit bureaux)
In force since .
A data brokers rule binding private bodies.
- Obligation class
- Licensing, Governance, Data subject rights
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- Register as a credit bureau before you offer or conduct business as one, or hold yourself out as authorised to offer any service customarily offered by a credit bureau.
- Protect the confidentiality of the consumer information you receive, compile, retain or report, use it only for a purpose the Act, other national legislation or applicable provincial legislation permits, and release it only to the consumer, as the law permits or requires, as the consumer instructs, or by order of a court or the Tribunal.
- Take reasonable steps to verify the accuracy of the consumer credit information reported to you, and do not knowingly or negligently provide a report that contains inaccurate information.
- Accept without charge the consumer's own filing of consumer credit information to correct or challenge what you hold about that consumer, and promptly expunge any prescribed information that is not permitted in your records.
- Receive, compile and report only consumer credit information the Act or the regulations allow, and receive it only from the persons the regulations prescribe.
- Let a person inspect their file without charge once within any period of twelve months, and when a person challenges information you hold, seek evidence for it and, within the prescribed time, provide the evidence or remove the information and all record of it.
- Do not report information that a person has challenged until the challenge has been resolved.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
What record it asks for
Logging duty
Sections 68 to 72 set confidentiality, accuracy and consumer-access duties on credit bureaux and ask for no access log or disclosure register. The National Credit Regulator may demand periodic aggregate reports under section 70(5), which are not a log. The sections carry no territorial scope clause, so no territorial hook is recorded.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
Section 43(2) bars a person from offering or conducting business as a credit bureau, or holding themselves out as authorised to offer any service customarily offered by one, unless registered as a credit bureau. Section 43(1) treats as a credit bureau a person who compiles and maintains data from reports of credit applications, credit agreements and payment history and issues reports concerning consumers based on that data.
Section 68(1) requires any person who receives, compiles, retains or reports confidential information about a consumer under the Act to protect its confidentiality and to use it only for a purpose the Act or other legislation permits. Section 70(2) requires a registered credit bureau to take reasonable steps to verify the accuracy of the consumer credit information reported to it and bars it from knowingly or negligently providing a report that contains inaccurate information.
Section 70(3) limits a credit bureau to receiving and reporting the consumer credit information listed in section 70(2) and other prescribed information, and to receiving it only from prescribed sources. Section 72(1)(b) gives every person a right to inspect their file held by a credit bureau without charge once within any period of twelve months.
Where a person challenges information a credit bureau holds, section 72(3) requires the bureau to seek evidence for it and, within the prescribed time, to provide that evidence or remove the information and all record of it. Section 72(5) bars a credit bureau from reporting challenged information until the challenge has been resolved. A credit bureau's failure to comply with a compliance notice issued under section 55 in relation to section 70 is an offence.
Section 161(1)(b) punishes an offence under the Act that no other paragraph covers by a fine or imprisonment of up to 12 months, or both. Section 151 lets the National Consumer Tribunal impose an administrative fine of up to the greater of 10 per cent of annual turnover or R1,000,000. Section 70 took effect on .
When LexLint raises it
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