A new Credit Information Sharing Act will soon enter into force, establishing a credit information register

On 30 June 2026, the new Credit Information Sharing Act will enter into force. On its basis, a credit information register will begin operating in Estonia in 2029. The register will bring together information on all of a person's financial obligations, including home loans, consumer loans, car leases, hire purchase agreements and quick loans.

Existing loans must be checked before a new loan is issued

The purpose of the new credit register is to prevent consumers from over-borrowing and to enable creditors to better assess a consumer's creditworthiness. Under the act, when a creditor, such as a bank, receives a credit application and before granting a new loan, it must in future check what obligations the person already has, and when receiving a credit application it must query the register for the applicant's financial obligations. In future, when a credit agreement is concluded, the creditor will also be obliged to transmit information arising from that agreement on the financial obligation assumed by the consumer, or credit information, to the registrar.

The creditor will transmit data on the new loan to the register within 24 hours

Credit information means the data collected and processed in the register for the purpose of assessing creditworthiness. This data includes, for example, general data on the consumer, such as name and personal identification code, general data on the creditor, general data on the guarantor, general data on the credit agreement, the type and amount of credit, the credit or claim balance, the type of repayment schedule, the type of interest rate and the fact of delay in fulfilling an obligation arising from the credit agreement. The creditor, such as a bank or debt collection agency, must submit this data to the credit register within 24 hours after a consumer credit agreement is concluded or amended.

It will also be possible to impose a loan ban on oneself

The new register will make it possible to apply a loan ban to a person at their own request. For this purpose, a list of consumers subject to restrictions on concluding consumer credit agreements has been created as a sub-register of the credit information register. The purpose of maintaining the list is to offer consumers an opportunity to restrict their own conclusion of consumer credit agreements.

A person is entered on the list indefinitely on the basis of their written application. However, after six months have passed from being entered on the list, the person has the right to apply for deletion from the list.

At the Chamber's proposal, the registrar will not prepare aggregate reports from the data

Initially, the keeper of the credit information register was to prepare regular aggregate reports on the data entered in the register in anonymised form and publish them on its website. At the Chamber's proposal, this obligation has been omitted from the act, because the Financial Supervision Authority and Eesti Pank already prepare statistical reports, and in view of this, imposing an additional obligation could cause an unnecessary administrative burden and unjustified data processing.

The credit register will start operating in 2029

The Credit Information Sharing Act will enter into force on 30 June 2026, but the creditor's obligation to submit information to the credit register will enter into force on 1 July 2028, and the obligation to query the register, meaning the full launch of the register, will take effect on 1 March 2029.

The Credit Information Sharing Act can be viewed here.