Global Credit Data was formed in December 2004 as a credit risk data-pooling initiative primarily designed to assist Member-banks in enhancing their internal credit risk models and completing the Basel II preparations in pursuit of the International Ratings Based Advanced Status.
Since then Global Credit Data has enjoyed remarkable success – both in terms of growing its membership and establishing its international reputation through the creation of the largest existing loss and recovery dataset for commercial loans. Its Loan Loss database currently contains over 170,000 individual facility default records from over 70,000 obligors across 120 different countries over a period from 1990 to date. The database is fed by Member-banks with all new defaults bi-annually. Over the years, Global Credit Data continuously professionalized and amended its databases to facilitate the increased use of its data e.g. in the context of IFRS 9 / CECL impairment modelling.
Membership has grown from the original base of 11 to a current membership of 54 Member-banks across Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and North America. Indeed, this is also reflected in the geographic coverage of the Global Credit Data databases which, originally limited to Europe, have been extended to include global exposures. Global Credit Data strives to enlarge its membership across the world because it believes that a global standard for data collection is in the interest of the financial industry as a whole.