Feedback from the BIIA Regional Meeting Phnom Penh, Cambodia March 2018

BIIA Inaugural Regional Meeting held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia – a SOLD OUT SUCCESS

The inaugural Regional Meeting held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on March on March 14^th and 15^th, 2018, proved to be a great success with over 40 attendees representing both consumer and commercial credit bureaus, credit registries and central banks from 12 countries in the region including Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Korea, Mongolia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.

The meeting was opened by our guest of honour, Her Excellency Neav Chanthana, Deputy Governor, National Bank of Cambodia who emphasized the importance of the subjects thatwould be d iscussed at the meeting – cybersecurity, cross border data exchange and new technology being used to share data such as block chain. We are extremely grateful to Her Excellency for welcoming the attendees to the meeting and for her words of support for the meeting.

Following the opening remarks by Her Excellency, Neil Munroe, Deputy Managing Director of BIIA provided an introduction to the association and an overview of global trends in the information industry and key regulatory themes.

This presentation was then followed by a roundtable session on cross border sharing of credit reports. Opening presentations from Michael Ritter, Head of Central Credit Register, Deutsche Bundesbank and Chair of The Legal Entity Identifier Regulatory Oversight Committee (LEI ROC), Cynthia McMurry, Head of International Partnerships, Nova Credit Inc. and Hung Ngovandan, Lead Financial Sector Specialist, IFC set the scene for discussions amongst the attendees on this key requirement in the region, chaired by Peter Sheerin, BIIA Executive Committee member.

After a networking lunch, attendees then heard from two guest speakers, Ashish Thapar, Managing Principal, Verizon Threat Research Advisory Services and Alberto Valentini, IT Security Director for CRIF Group, who outlined the growing threat of cyber-attacks and how organisations, including credit bureaus need to be responding to these threats. Following these presentations there was an active dialogue between attendees, chaired by Neil Munroe, BIIA Deputy Managing Director.

In the evening of the first day attendees enjoyed a relaxing river dinner cruise on the Mekong river, allowing further networking opportunities.

Day two of the meeting looked at the use of new technology to share data, with attendees hearing from two experts on block chain –Ashok Venkateswaran from Bluzelle Networks Pte Ltd and Roberto Capodieci, founder @ BlockchainZoo.com and DeBuNe.org. These presentations helped attendees understand the role of block chain and led to a number of questions from the attendees on the subject.

The meeting ended with a discussion amongst the attendees, led by Neil Munroe and Peter Sheerin, on whether BIIA should host another regional meeting and the topics that could be discussed. We are pleased to say that the overall feedback from the attendees was that the event had been extremely useful in raising key topics that are critical to the development of the information industry as well as a useful forum to enable a dialogue between credit bureaus, credit registers and central banks. Based on this feedback BIIA is actively planning the next Regional Meeting. Should any member be interested in hosting the event please do let us know by contacting Neil Munroe or Peter Sheerin.

BIIA would like to thank all of the speakers for their presentations and input to the roundtable sessions. We would also like to thank our sponsors for the event – Credit Bureau Cambodia, Credit Bureau Singapore, CRIF and NOVA, without whose assistance we would not have been able to host the event and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) for all their support.