Egypt’s I-Score revives plan for SME creditworthiness unit

Egyptian Credit Bureau (I-Score) has revived plans for a new offshoot on assessing the creditworthiness of small and medium-sized businesses, its chief executive said on Thursday.

I-Score has already started studies to launch its SME rating unit but later withdrew such plans after the Egyptian central bank announced its initiative in 2016 to increase bank lending to the SMEs, Mohamed Kafafi said.

“Now, the company is considering the launch of new offshoot or a product designed to assess the SMEs’ creditworthiness,” Kafafi told Amwal Al Ghad.

“Now, the company has replaced the idea of launching a subsidiary with a product designed to assess the SMEs’ creditworthiness,” Kafafi told Amwal Al Ghad.

Founded in 2005, I-Score provides services to credit providers including banks, non-bank financial institutions, and suppliers of goods and services for taking lending decisions. It maintains a database of credit information for SMEs and consumers and enables authorised users, I-Score members, to access I-Score database to carry out creditworthiness checks on consumers.