Circular dated June 24, 2020 obliging banks to notify irregular customers to delete historical information and lift the ban on dealing with them

Cairo on: 24 June 2020

Dear Mr. Chairman,

Greetings,

With reference to the circular letter dated April 7, 2020, regarding the amendment of the rules governing the credit registration system at the Central Bank of Egypt, specifically concerning the categories of irregular customers in repayment and the principles of dealing with these customers, which included the following:

• Elimination of the blacklist for customers from institutions and elimination of negative lists for customers who obtained loans for consumer purposes.

• Reduction of the periods for disclosing historical information about customers after repayment.

• Launching freedom of dealing with customers (from specific classification categories) and lifting the ban on dealing with them.

• Purging databases of irregular customers and deleting customers with debts less than one thousand pounds exceptionally and for a single time.

And in order to enhance the principle of transparency and disclosure and to raise awareness among customers about their rights regarding the modification of the periods for making historical information available or lifting the ban on dealing with them, the Central Bank deemed it necessary for banks to communicate with customers to whom the instructions apply by any of the different means of communication, as follows:

First: Informing customers of the reduction of disclosure periods to become six months or one year from the date of completing repayment and their current status regarding the deletion of historical information or not, depending on the case.

Second: Informing customers of conditional bans of their current status regarding the lifting of the ban and launching freedom of dealing with all banks, which is prepared by the bank according to the credit study for each customer individually.

Please be kind enough to emphasize the necessity of full compliance with the above and providing the Central Bank of Egypt with what has been done in this regard by a deadline of one month from its date.

Tarek Amer