Australia and New Zealand

This page considers the Australian and New Zealand consumer credit reporting industry and tenancy reporting services, including profiles of major Australian and overseas credit reporting enterprises.

It covers -

• introduction
• Australian and New Zealand credit reporting businesses
• tenancy services

     introduction

The industry in Australia reflects overseas structures, with most revenue accruing to a handful of major businesses (eg Experian) and a wide range of smaller enterprises engaging in reporting, debt collection (including physical repossession of goods) and personal investigation.

The industry majors and advocacy groups have been at some pains to distance themselves from the stigma associated with some of the smaller operators.

     Australian and New Zealand businesses

In Australia the major independent operator appears to be Baycorp Advantage, which boasts that it is

the largest credit-reporting bureau in Australia. As such our secure databases hold up-to-date records on over 13.5 million individuals and trading organisations.

It has a partnership arrangement with Insurance Reference Services Ltd (IRS), a non-profit organisation encompassing the Australian insurance industry, and has formed Trans Union Advantage as a joint venture with TransUnion. IRS was established in 1991 as a central register of insurance claims. By 1995 its database covered 11 million claims (with an average 45,000 enquires per month), climbing to 18 million claims by 2002.

Baycorp originated in New Zealand and traces its history to the Hutt Valley Collection Agency established in 1956 "over a butcher shop in Wellington" by the McLaughlin family. They acquired other NZ collecting and reporting agencies - notably Nationwide Credit Services in 1987 - before an unsuccessful expansion into Australia and takeover of major competitor Creditcorp Services in 1993. It returned to Australia in 1998, established a Singapore-based joint venture with Keppel Communications and an identity certification service 128i Limited (endorsed by the NZ government in 2001). In the latter year it acquired Australian loan management services company Axcess Consulting and merged with Sydney-based Data Advantage to form Baycorp Advantage.

Data Advantage had absorbed Credit Advantage (formerly the Credit Reference Association of NSW), with records on over 12 million people and a million businesses. The Association started in 1967 with bad debt information from the Retail Trader's Association Of NSW. It joined a Victorian database in 1976 before going national and automating enhanced data.

Competitor Debt Management Service (DMS), part of Debt Management Group, "provides credit information and personnel recruitment services". TCM - an affiliate of the credit management and debt collection services network TCM Group International - operates in New Zealand as ICMS Credit Systems Ltd.

D&B Australasia (DBA) announced in 2002 that it was entering the Australian and New Zealand consumer credit reference market. It was at that time 77.5% owned by AMP Henderson, 2.5% held by D&B Corporation and 20% by local management, following a 2001 IPO of the Australasian arm of the former Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) group.

     tenancy services

As highlighted earlier in this profile, tenancy services are commercial entities that maintain databases about individuals renting domestic accommodation.

Practice varies from state to state, reflecting differing housing markets, tenancy and fair trading legislation, and state/territory privacy codes that preceded the federal Privacy Act. The 2003 Tenancy Databases in the context of Tenure Management: Risk Minimisation and Tenant Outcomes in the Private Rental Sector (PDF) report by the Australian Housing & Urban Research Institute suggests that there has been significant growth and consolidation within the industry over the past decade, with the first major database commencing in 1987.

Guthrie's 2001 study (PDF) suggests that growth reflected restrictions under Part 111 of the federal Privacy Act 1988, which specifically prohibited real estate agents from access to an individual's credit history through the use of credit databases. Large-scale tenancy databases offered an effective - and arguably under-regulated - mechanism for rapid tenant screening.

The major operators as of 2004 appear to be

• Tenancy Information Centre Australasia (TICA)
• National Tenancy Database (NTD), formerly Remington White and Rent Check
• Barclay MIS Group (BG)
• RP Data (formerly )
• Trading Reference Australia (TRA), formerly Tenant Reference Australia
• Australian Property Owners Database (APOD)
• Console
• Tenant Check
• Landlords Advisory Service (LAC), using TDD

with the first two having market dominance.

As with credit reference agencies, some operators provide ancillary services such as debt collection, pricing and property management software. Information on the databases is supplied by subscribers to each service - typically real estate agents and property managers. Access to most of the databases is formally available only to registered real estate agents or large property portfolio managers. There have, however, been suggestions that there is substantial leakage of data through subscribers to private enquiry agents and other entities.

In 2004 the Federal Privacy Commissioner, in issuing four complaint
determinations under the federal Privacy Act, commented that

Having a home is a very fundamental right and therefore it's very important that all tenancy database operators have exemplary information handling practices

If the rental sector believes that databases are an important tool then it's essential that they are reliable. If they are not accurate this could have negative results for both landlords and tenants.

The Commissioner noted that TICA Default Tenancy Control Pty Ltd, operator of one of Australia's largest tenancy databases, had breached the Act and ordered rectification of its information handling practices. The Commissioner indicated that TICA took 6 minutes at $5.45 per minute in calls to identify whether it held information on individuals, arguably in conflict with expectations that tenancy history records are accurate, up to date and accessible for a reasonable fee.





   next page  (advocacy)