On August 27, the First Committee of the Senate passed the bill modifying the 2008 Habeas Data Law. The regulation proposes reducing the time that debtors’ negative reports remain filed with the central risk entities as from the settlement of the debt, from a maximum term of four to two years. Since this is a reform to a statutory law, the regulation must be approved within the legislative period in which it was presented. The bill is expected to be debated on the floor of the Senate in the coming weeks.

The initiative, presented by Senators Luis Fernando Velasco (Partido Liberal – independent) and David Barguil (Partido Conservador – allied with the ruling party), also sets the expiry period for negative data at five years, even if the payment obligations have not been fulfilled. In addition, it obliges financial institutions to notify their respective debtors-in-arrears that they will file a report with the credit bureaus when they fail to comply with their obligations. The measure also establishes that the credit rating of debtors must be normalized when the negative report is eliminated. 

Furthermore, the bill grants a one-time amnesty for those who pay off their debts within the first six months of the law and proposes that financial institutions must notify the user twice before reporting them, whenever the accumulated debt is less than 20% of the minimum wage (USD 46). Senator David Barguil said that they hope that “in about a month and a half the measure will reach the House of Representatives to complete the process and give us this important law which offers millions of Colombians currently outside the credit system a second chance.”