Biuro Informacji Kredytowej S.A. was appointed to minimise the credit risk and to increase the security and protection of the financial transactions. Biuro manages and expands the efficient system of credit information exchange by collecting, storing, processing and distributing comprehensive information about credit histories of the banks/thrift houses/credit unions clients in the form of credit reports.

Pursuant to the Banking Law Act, each bank/credit union is obliged to assess its clients in terms of their ability to satisfy their financial obligations and to estimate the risk related to the granting of the credit or loan to such clients, thus ensuring security of the entrusted pecuniary assets. In a situation of limited access to comprehensive information, the assessment of real credit worthiness and risk involved during the credit application review process of the bank/credit union is difficult. In view of the above, the bank should protect its interests and demand that the client should provide additional security and bear the costs of credit handling.

Now that the banks can use the services of BIK, banks/Credit unions relieve the clients from the duty to individually obtain written statements concerning their liabilities from a number of organisations, and thus spare the time of the client without additional costs and accelerates the credit granting procedure. Further, banks/Credit unions by using the BIK database increase the security of the deposits entrusted by the clients.

BIK by creating the information sharing system between various institutions pursuant to Art. 7 of Directive 95/46/WE of 24 October 1995 fulfils its tasks in public interests by facilitating the clients' quick and effective access to banking services and by protecting their deposits. Biuro Informacji Kredytowej S.A. acts under the following rules:

All the banks and organisations which are statutorily authorised to grant credits and regularly submit full and complete data to the Biuro as per the relevant agreements are entitled to use the information.

Banks/Credit unions are responsible for the correctness and reliability of the information submitted to the Biuro databases. The Biuro is responsible for the consistency of the information submitted to the users with the source data and undertakes not to amend or modify the submitted information.

Biuro does not disclose the information which could constitute a commercial secret to the banks, e.g. the name of the submitting organisation is not disclosed. An enquiry always concerns a concrete person and the enquiring entity must submit the relevant ID data of the person concerned.

All the information collected and shared between Biuro and the users is treated as bank secrets. It has to be emphasised that the Biuro has implemented the security system including the relevant equipment and internal and external procedures which prevent the BIK disclosure of information to unauthorised parties.