Establishment and Management Bodies

Credit Bureau of the Association of Serbian Banks was founded on February 18th 2004, as the organizational part of the Association of Serbian Banks on the basis of an Agreement on Establishment, concluded between the banks and the ASB. In October that year, the Credit Bureau started issuing reports for natural persons. Already in May 2006 the Credit Bureau also started issuing reports for legal entities and entrepreneurs.

The management bodies of the Credit Bureau are the following: the ASB Board of Directors, the ASB Secretary General, Business Council as the operating body and Head of the Credit Bureau from within the Association of Serbian Banks.

The implementation of the Credit Bureau project brought the banking sector of the Republic of Serbia in line with modern market economies, monitoring the settlement of financial liabilities of legal entities and natural persons in a systematic and organized manner.

Credit bureau’s development has a rather long tradition, reaching back to 1924, when the idea was born within the Association of Banks concerning the need to establish an institution that would engage in collecting all the relevant data, making them available to the monetary institutes (as were banks called at the time). At the time, this idea was not met with much understanding on the part of the authorities. The Association of Banks, however, did not give up on its project, and in 1928 it drafted the Decree on the Establishment of the Credit Intelligence Department, which was then welcomed with undivided approval and a high degree of confidence amongst all monetary institutions. The Board of Directors of the Association of Banks, in its 1928 annual report, explains in more detail the implementation of the idea on the setting up of the Credit Intelligence Department: “In grateful appreciation of the kind auspices of the National Bank, for accepting the idea on the formation of this Department, both at its central head offices and in some of the branches designated by the Association of Banks, we may now declare with pleasure that in the future, relationships in the crediting operations in our country will be properly regulated and well arranged. It was with a great impediment that the monetary institutes were faced when, although provided with certain information on their obligors or persons applying for new credit facilities, they were not truly capable of gaining an insight into all direct or indirect liabilities of the persons concerned, and on the basis thereof able to properly decide on the amount of credits to be prudently granted. Densely intertwined liabilities of a number of persons connected may cause, and did indeed cause, the fall of all or at least many of them, as soon as even a single one of them would fall in default or go bankrupt. […]

Thus the idea was born at the Association of Banks to establish a new institution that would collect such information and render them available to the monetary institutes. And this matter occupied substantial efforts and time as perceived from the earlier reports of our Association.

Once the project was drafted and the Decree completed on December 20th last year, the Association of Banks deemed it necessary to submit it to all of its members and convene a Conference, where the Decree was adopted by the entire membership with only some minor amendments, but where different opinions were also voiced by individual members, and remarks articulated concerning certain articles of the Decree, as was properly and comprehensively reported to the National Bank. The National Bank thereupon verified the final text of the Decree on Establishment of this Department, submitted it to the Association, which in turn forwarded the same to its entire membership, inviting them to give their approval in writing. The Credit Intelligence Department started its work on February 28th 1929.”

In 2004, over seven decades later, a similar institution was established at the Association of Serbia Banks, operating under the name of Credit Bureau.

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