What can the Debt Register mean for you?

Norwegians have a total of more than NOK 110 billion in consumer loans, about half of which is credit card debt. On 1 July 2019, the deadline for financial institutions to start reporting debt information to the Debt Register expired. The government's consultation paper on the Debt Register states that “the purpose of the law is to facilitate more precise credit assessments, in order to contribute to fewer households ending up in debt problems”.

The debt register provides an overview of consumers' unsecured debt and must be updated continuously. Before 1 July, banks checked your income and did a credit assessment of you if you were applying for a loan. Now that all banks must report unsecured debt to the Debt Register, they will have more information when assessing whether you already have too much debt. This will make it more difficult to take out more consumer loans and credit cards. It will protect those who want to take out more loans than they can service and will also act as a deterrent to aggressive players in the market.

The debt register is a result of the Debt Information Act, which came into force in 2017. The government has decided that such companies must be privately run, and Evry, Experian and Finance Norway have been granted licences to operate debt registers in Norway.

Anyone can log in to the Debt Register's access service. The service is secured with login via ID-porten and you get full access to all the information the register has about you as a private person.

It's important to know that the Debt Register will also highlight unutilised credit. This means that credit cards you've never used may result in you receiving a smaller mortgage. Many people do not have full control of how many credit cards they have or what credit limit there is on the various credit cards. It is therefore recommended that you log in and cut up unused credit cards and ensure that the issuer deletes unused credit.