The Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) hosted an online meeting on Wednesday, December 9, 2020, to raise awareness about the Information and Credit Bureau (BIC). This awareness aimed to make known the BIC whose existence and functioning are unknown to the general public. The BCEAO is supported under this instrument by the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

Access to finance is the most important lever for a country's development. Something that is very limited, even very weak within the member countries of the West African Monetary Union (WAMU).

The BCEAO, according to Madani Touré, an advisor within the institution, has understood that the lack of information on the lender is one of the main constraints. Among the actions undertaken to overcome this constraint is the development by the BCEAO of the Information and Credit Bureau (BIC), which covers all eight WAMU member countries. However, the public does not use it sufficiently due to a lack of in-depth knowledge of this instrument. The session on Wednesday 9 December aims to bring the general public to better know this instrument and to make it their own.

An Information and Credit Bureau (BIC), according to Oscar Marebou, representative of the IFC, is an institution that collects from financial institutions, public sources and major billers (SONABEL, ONEA and mobile phones), available data on the credit or payment history of a borrower, processes the information collected and markets the products derived from this information.

The need to increase the financial potential for MSMEs

According to Adamou Sambaré, Director General of waMU's BIC, the implementation of a BIC aims to reduce the asymmetry of information between lenders and borrowers in order to improve people's access to financial services at reduced costs. It also aims to improve the quality of the portfolio of supervised institutions through better risk management and to increase the effectiveness of the supervision of credit activity through the anticipation of borrowers' over-indebtedness and the control of systemic risk.

If you have a good credit rating, says Marebu, you may be able to negotiate better loan terms with your bank and get more affordable and accessible loans. The BIC also promotes responsible lending practices and helps borrowers avoid over-indebtedness. For Oscar Marebou, the Credit Bureau is one of the solutions to offer credit to 70% of the population. In Morocco, for example, this instrument has made it possible to reduce bad or bad loans by 61.9% and to count more than 40% of women for the new loans granted.

Started in 2016 with about 30,000 people on its database, the CreditInfo-volo of the WAMU BIC currently has more than 9 million people and about 200,000 companies.