MORE THAN 20,000 people with loans mistakenly had outdated information included on recent credit reports due to Central Bank error.

The Central Bank of Ireland, which is responsible for regulating the banking industry, has revealed that it recently identified an error that meant some borrower information was kept for longer than it should have been and mistakenly included in credit reports.

Information was retained on the Central Credit Register, a database recording personal and credit information on loans of €500 or more, for up to an additional three months.

A computer process is supposed to automatically delete data from the register after five years.

However, the Central Bank discovered in August 2023 that data from May, June and July 2018 – which have just fallen outside of the five-year period – had not been deleted.

Instead, the outdated information was still being used in credit reports issued to borrowers and lender.

“While this information was accurate, the additional three months of information should not have been made available, and constitutes a data breach under data protection legislation,” the Central Bank said in a statement.

“The Central Bank sincerely apologises for this error and can confirm that immediate action was taken to fix it.”

It said that although the mistake is considered a data breach under data protection legislation, borrowers’ data has not been compromised or accessed by any unauthorised third parties.

The Central Bank has launched an investigation to compile a full account of the issue and whether any borrowers were impacted by the incident.

“A key focus of our ongoing investigation is to establish whether any borrowers were impacted by this incident. The main mechanism through which borrowers could be impacted is where the Central Credit Register contained information around loan performance over the months of May, June and July 2018, which may have adversely affected decisions by lenders to extend new credit or decisions by borrowers to seek new credit.

“This could be the case where (i) the records pointed to repayment difficulties during the additional, outdated, three months; and (ii) lenders or borrowers had sought to access those records over the period between 1 June and 7 August 2023.”

So far, the investigation has determined that of the 476,000 total enquiries made by lenders or borrowers for information held on the register between 1 June and 7 August 2023, the records of around 20,500 borrowers contained performance data pointing to repayment difficulties in May, June or July 2018.

“It is important to note that the information held on the CCR is one of many factors that lenders use to determine whether a loan is approved or not,” the Central Bank said.

“In addition, the fact that lenders made a request for information on the CCR does not mean that those specific pieces of information were used by lenders in their credit decisions.

“For example, the Central Bank’s analysis so far has determined that the records of a significant proportion of the 20,500 borrowers continued to point to performance difficulties in the months following May, June and July 2018.

“At this stage, therefore, the Central Bank is not in a position to determine with accuracy the extent to which credit applications were adversely affected by this incident.”