Ecuador Credit Bureau Reform Awaits Rules on Utility and Tax Data

Ecuador · ECONOMY

A 2025 law opened new data channels for Aval Buró and Equifax, but a missing regulation keeps utility and tax reporting on hold.

Ecuador’s credit bureaus gained new data sources under the Ley Reformatoria al Código Orgánico Monetario y Financiero, in force since 14 October 2025, but the implementing regulation needed to activate utility and tax reporting is still pending. The Ecuador credit bureau reform is designed to let firms such as Aval Buró and Equifax build scores for people who have no formal credit history.

Ecuador Credit Bureau Law Opens Four New Data Channels

The reform, in force since 14 October 2025, allows credit bureaus to draw on four new categories of information. Bureaus such as Aval Buró and Equifax can incorporate them into the scores they provide to lenders.

The first channel is securities-market defaults, reported through the Superintendencia de Compañías. About 300 issuers will have to report.

The second covers payments of utility bills — water, electricity and telephone — and national taxes. The third makes telecom and commercial reporting mandatory, where it was previously voluntary.

The fourth channel adds social-security contributions from the IESS, ISSFA and ISSPOL institutes.

The Ley Reformatoria al Código Orgánico Monetario y Financiero amended the country’s monetary and financial code to widen the perimeter of data that must or may be reported.

The four channels add to the information bureaus already receive from the financial system.

Social-Security Data Already Live Since October

Social-security reporting has been operating since October 2025. According to Aval, 67 new reporting entities joined the system, bringing US$2.7 billion in debts into bureau records.

That data brings obligations into the credit record that bureaus could not previously see, giving lenders a fuller picture of each applicant.

Aval, one of the bureaus operating in Ecuador, published the figures on the new reporting entities and the debts they added.

The three institutes administer the country’s main social-security regimes.

The 67 new reporting entities that joined through the social-security channel show the scale of the expansion already underway.

The securities-market channel will extend the same logic to defaults supervised by the Superintendencia de Compañías, with around 300 issuers expected to report.

Utility and Tax Reporting Still Not Operational

The law authorizes bureaus to use utility payments and national taxes, but the implementing regulation has not been issued. The Junta de Política y Regulación Financiera y Monetaria must define which utilities and taxes, and which entities, must report.

Until that regulation is published, utility and tax data remain authorized but not operational. The Ecuador credit bureau system cannot yet count on-time water or power bills toward a score.

The law took effect on 14 October 2025, but authorization alone does not move data: the regulation must set who reports and under what rules.

The Junta de Política y Regulación Financiera y Monetaria, the body in charge of financial policy and regulation, will set the operational details of the new reporting in that regulation.

Bureaus cannot begin collecting utility and tax data until those definitions are published.

The pending regulation is the missing piece before the reform’s widest-reaching channel can operate, since utility payments touch almost every household.

Score Range Stays at 150 to 999

The reform does not change the score scale, which runs from 150 to 999. What changes is the amount of information behind each Ecuador credit bureau score.

‘More information means more financial inclusion,’ said Javier Velasco, Aval’s manager, describing the logic of the reform.

Velasco manages Aval, one of the two bureaus named in the reporting on the reform.

The scale remains 150 to 999, so existing users of the system will see no change in how scores are expressed.

People with no formal credit history are often pushed into informal lending, known in Ecuador as chulco, at high cost. A score built on utility, tax or social-security records could give them an entry point to formal credit.

What the Ecuador Credit Bureau Overhaul Means for Borrowers

For lenders, mandatory telecom and commercial reporting broadens the file on each applicant. Information that companies once shared voluntarily must now be reported.

For borrowers, the benefit depends on the pending regulation. Paying water, power and phone bills on time will only help a credit score once the rules defining that reporting are in force.

For now, social-security reporting has been live since October 2025 and telecom and commercial reporting is mandatory, while the securities-market and utility-tax channels are still being put in place.

Equifax and Aval Buró process the reported data into the credit scores used by banks and other lenders in the country.

The changes apply to the bureaus operating in the country, including Aval Buró and Equifax, which receive and process the reported data.

Attention now falls on the Junta de Política y Regulación Financiera y Monetaria, the body that must issue the regulation for the new reporting to begin.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

• www.primicias.ec
• www.vistazo.com

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