Parliament approves new consumer credit rating legislation

The House of Representatives has approved a package of seven bills aimed at establishing a consumer credit scoring framework. The legislation passed with 27 votes in favor and 13 against, including members from AKEL, Andreas Themistocleous, and Kostis Efstathiou. The new system will utilize the 'ARTEMIS' data exchange mechanism to track borrowing data across credit institutions and credit acquiring companies. The Central Bank of Cyprus is granted expanded powers for supervision, sanctioning, and issuing regulatory directives. Personal data protection and banking secrecy are explicitly addressed in the law, which specifies that only loans where a person is the primary borrower or co-borrower will be included in the scoring. Guarantors are excluded from these calculations. This legislative package is part of the national Recovery and Resilience Plan and is a prerequisite for receiving subsequent funding installments.