In the US, consumers can freeze their credit worthiness records and receive a code. When the records are frozen, the only orgs that can access the records are those already doing business with the consumer. If a consumer wants to open up a new account, they share the code with the prospective creditor who uses it to see the credit report.
So the question is, how are access controls on credit histories done in various EU nations? Do any use unlock codes like the US, or is it all trust based?
I don’t mean to imply anything about scoring, but certainly there must be some kind of mechanism to expose bad debtors to lenders.
In Belgium, there are no private credit bureaus but there is a central bank. Belgian banks are obligated to report loan defaults and cash transactions to the central bank, and creditors are obligated to check the central bank’s records. Consumers have no way to control creditors access to their records in the central bank. It seems to be trust based. The central bank apparently trusts that a creditor is checking a consumer’s file in connection with an application for credit by the consumer.