Dutch debt registry wants ability to share all mortgage data with all finance providers

The national debt registration office, BKR, wants the power to include personal mortgages in its registry in the near future, in order to obtain and provide a more complete picture of household debt. The reasoning is that lenders can better fulfill their duty of care if the credit bureau also keeps track of consumer mortgage debt, a spokesperson for the organization confirmed, after the story was first reported in De Telegraaf.

The duty of care that financial service providers follow includes a provision that they must not burden their customers with excessive debts. The BKR spokesperson said that a complete picture of consumer debt, including mortgages, is very important for this.

Vereniging Eigen Huis (VEH), the association which represents the interests of homeowners, denounced the plan on Thursday morning. There is a fear that information about mortgages will become available to any party who consults the BKR. The BKR said these concerns are unfounded, as “sharing data with everyone” will not happen quickly, because lenders are only notified after someone falls into payment arrears for several months.

Yet registering mortgage data is a particularly dicey issue for VEH director Cindy Kremer. "It is important for every company to contact the customer quickly in the event of payment arrears. But registering every mortgage with BKR, so that they are also notified of every payment arrears, does not help the consumer. The unsolicited distribution of this goes much too far for many people, because no one knows who receives this personal information and what happens to it."

According to the BKR, many other parties responded positively to the plan to register mortgage debt. "And the Netherlands is the only European country that does not yet do this," the spokesperson added. She said that the final decision on whether or not to record these debts in the register will be made over the course of 2023. It will then take at least another six months before the BKR can actually start implementation.