Your Credit Report in Zambia (2026): How to Get It Free and Fix What's Wrong

The document that decides your loan, and that most Zambians have never seen

Every time you apply for credit in Zambia — a bank facility, a payroll deduction loan, a microfinance advance, an overdraft — the lender looks you up before it looks at you. What it reads is a credit report: a file of your borrowing history assembled from what your previous lenders reported about you.

You have a legal right to read that same file. The Credit Reporting Act, No. 8 of 2018, in force since 17 October 2019, gives every Zambian a free copy at least once a year, sets a five-day deadline for delivering it, and puts hard clocks on fixing anything wrong in it. Very few borrowers use any of this — which is why people discover a decade-old written-off debt at the exact moment a loan is declined.

Who holds your file

Two things hold credit information about you, and they are easy to confuse.

The Credit Registry is operated by the Bank of Zambia itself under section 17, and credit providers regulated under the Banking and Financial Services Act must supply their information to it. It is a supervisory database; the Bank prescribes who may access it.

A credit reporting agency — the credit bureau — is a licensed private company that compiles reports and sells them to lenders. It produces the report a lender actually reads, and it is the one you have direct rights against. There are fewer than people assume: the Bank of Zambia's Annual Report 2024 counts exactly one licensed credit reference bureau, unchanged across 2022, 2023 and 2024. One file, one place to fix it.

You do not have to hunt for its contact details. Section 36 puts that duty on your lender: every credit provider must give you the contact details of the agencies it reports you to, and must tell you about your right to check and correct your own credit history. Ask.

Your right to a free report

Section 37 is the one worth knowing by heart. You have the right to a copy of all credit information the agency holds on you, and the Act requires the report to include three things beyond the history itself:

• a list of every user who accessed your information in the last six months;
• an explanation of any codes used, so you can actually read the report; and
• the source of the information.

That first item is the underused one. An enquiry you do not recognise is a warning worth acting on, in the same way an unexplained debit is.

A request must be accompanied by a certified copy of your NRC or passport. The agency must then respond within seven days — and must provide the report free of charge within five days in three situations:

1. at least once a year, simply on request;
2. after an investigation by the Bank of Zambia under section 40; and
3. within thirty days of an adverse action notice — see below.

An agency may refuse in limited circumstances: if you have not given it enough to find your file, if answering would expose another person's information, or if it would breach a court order or disclose confidential commercial information. It must then tell you in writing within thirty days, with a reason. Silence is not a lawful answer.

What is not allowed to be in there

Section 29 lists what a credit reporting agency must not include. Read against your own file, it is a checklist of things to challenge:

• Anything whose source is not recorded. The source's name and address must be in the database and readily ascertainable by you.
• Anything not based on the most reliable evidence reasonably available.
• Bankruptcy more than ten years from your discharge — unless you have been bankrupt more than once.
• A court judgment more than two years old, measured from the date it was rendered — unless the judgment creditor or their agent confirms the amount is still unpaid and that confirmation is on record.
• A debt, three years after final payment — or, where nothing was ever paid, five years after you incurred it.
• An administrative fine, three years after payment, or five years after it was incurred if unpaid.
• Anything given orally, unless reduced to writing.
• Your state of health, race, creed, colour, ancestry, ethnic origin, religion or political affiliation.
• Your criminal record, except financial fraud and similar offences.

The ten-year rule people get backwards

Section 26 says an agency shall retain your credit information for at least ten years from final loan repayment, a credit being written off, a declaration of bankruptcy, or a discharge from bankruptcy.

Note the direction of that rule. It is a floor on how long records are kept, not a ceiling on how long they may be held against you. A settled or written-off account does not vanish; section 29 governs what may still be shown, and that is where the three- and five-year limits on debts live.

So settling an old debt does not erase it. What it does is start the clock in section 29(e) — three years from final payment, rather than five years from when you incurred it with nothing paid. That is a real reason to settle rather than walk away, and a better one than most people are given. Our guide on how to borrow money safely in Zambia covers the decisions that put entries on this file in the first place.

When a lender turns you down

Section 38 creates a right most declined applicants never hear about. Where a credit provider takes adverse action against you based, wholly or partly, on a credit report, it must notify you within thirty days. You then have thirty days to request the contact details of the agency that prepared it — and under section 37(4)(c) you are entitled to a free copy of that report within thirty days of the notice.

A decline is therefore not a dead end. It is the trigger for a free look at the exact file that caused it. If you have been refused a facility — particularly a salary-deduction loan, where approval turns on your existing commitments as much as your history — read the file before applying anywhere else. Our guide to payroll loans in Zambia explains why a string of active deductions is itself what a lender is reading.

How to challenge an entry

Section 39 gives you the right to challenge, in writing, anything in your report you believe is inaccurate, incomplete or outdated. What follows is a sequence of deadlines that runs whether or not anyone reminds anybody:

• Within five days, the agency must send the credit provider a notice with an endorsed copy of the report, specifying the challenged information.
• Where the inaccuracy is attributable to the agency itself, it must investigate within fourteen days.
• The credit provider must investigate within thirty days and report back in writing on whether the entry is to be deleted, corrected or maintained.
• If the provider fails to respond in time, the agency shall remove the challenged information and inform the Bank of Zambia. A lender that ignores the clock loses the entry.
• Within five days of that report, the agency must tell you the findings — and must also notify any subscriber who obtained a report containing the bad information in the last twelve months.
• Where the information is corrected, you get a free copy of the corrected report.

Section 30 covers errors the lender spots itself: it must correct them within thirty days and tell the agency, which must act within five days. Put your challenge in writing and keep proof of sending — every deadline above runs from a date somebody must be able to point to.

If the bureau will not fix it

Section 35 requires every agency to publish a written complaints procedure, designate a customer service officer for it, and keep complaint records for two years. Use that route first; it exists so there is something to exhaust.

If it fails, the Bank of Zambia may investigate. Under section 40 it can act on its own initiative or on a complaint — including one made anonymously, or brought on your behalf. A complaint must come within two years of exhausting your section 35 rights, and if the Bank declines it must give written reasons within fourteen days. Where it finds information inaccurate, incomplete or outdated, section 31 lets it order the agency to amend or delete it, restrict its use, and notify anyone who already received the report.

What you agreed to, and what you did not

Two provisions sit uncomfortably together. Section 23(2) says collection of credit information about you does not require your consent — your history is gathered whether or not you signed anything. Section 24(1) then says an agency shall not disclose it without your written consent, subject to gateways such as a court order. But section 24(2) removes that protection for adverse information: no consent is required to disclose credit information that is adverse.

Good history is disclosed with your permission; bad history is disclosed regardless. Breaching the disclosure rule is an offence carrying a fine of up to one hundred thousand penalty units or a year's imprisonment, or both — at the forty-ngwee penalty unit set by SI 25 of 2024, a ceiling of K40,000.

A routine worth keeping

1. Claim the free annual report, with a certified copy of your NRC.
2. Read the six-month access list first. Enquiries you cannot explain matter more than balances you already know about.
3. Check every entry against section 29 — sourceless entries, judgments over two years old with no creditor confirmation on record, debts more than three years after final payment.
4. Challenge in writing and diarise the dates. Five days, fourteen days, thirty days.
5. Check before you apply, not after. A correction takes weeks; a lending decision takes days.

If you are weighing new borrowing, work out what your income actually supports before a lender does — our affordability calculator does that arithmetic. If you are opening your first facility, how to open a bank account in Zambia covers the NRC and TPIN documentation you will need at the same counter.

Frequently asked questions

How often can I get my credit report free? At least once a year on request, plus after a Bank of Zambia investigation and within thirty days of an adverse action notice. Each must be provided free within five days.

How do I find out which bureau holds my file? Ask your lender. Section 36 obliges every credit provider to give you the contact details of the agencies it reports to, and to tell you about your right to check and correct your record.

Can a lender check my report without asking me? The Act does not require your consent for information to be collected. Disclosure generally requires written consent — but that requirement does not apply where the information is adverse.

Does paying off an old debt remove it? No, it changes which limit applies. A debt may not be shown three years after final payment, whereas an unpaid debt may be shown for five years after it was incurred. Payment shortens the exposure; it does not delete the history.

A default on my report is not mine. What do I do? Challenge it in writing under section 39. The agency has five days to notify the credit provider and the provider has thirty days to investigate — if it does not respond, the agency must remove the entry and inform the Bank of Zambia.

Is there a legal credit score in Zambia? The Act regulates the credit report — what may be collected, shown, corrected and disclosed. It does not legislate a score or a scale. Any score is something a bureau or lender builds on top of the report, so ask what a number measures before treating it as official.

Sources

• The Credit Reporting Act, No. 8 of 2018 (Zambia) — assented 28 July 2018, gazetted 31 July 2018, commenced 17 October 2019 by SI 70 of 2019. Every right, deadline and exclusion above comes from the text of the Act, principally sections 17, 18, 23, 24, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40 and 41. Read via the Zambia Legal Information Institute's copy of the gazetted Act: https://zambialii.org/akn/zm/act/2018/8/eng@2018-07-31. The Bank of Zambia also publishes it at https://www.boz.zm/TheCreditReportingAct2018.pdf.
• Bank of Zambia, Annual Report 2024 — Table 9.17, "Structure of NDTFIs, 2022-2024", for the count of licensed credit reference bureaus. https://www.boz.zm/sites/default/files/2026-01/Bank_of_Zambia_2024_Annual_Report.pdf
• Statutory Instrument No. 25 of 2024, The Fees and Fines (Fee and Penalty Unit Value) (Amendment) Regulations, 2024 — gazetted 19 April 2024, substituting "forty ngwee" for "thirty ngwee", which puts one hundred thousand penalty units at K40,000. https://zambialii.org/akn/zm/act/si/2024/25/eng@2024-04-19

Last reviewed: August 2026. General information, not legal or financial advice. The rights and deadlines above are those set by the Credit Reporting Act, No. 8 of 2018; confirm the current contact details and procedure of your licensed credit reporting agency with that agency or with your own lender, which is required by law to provide them.