On its first reading, Colombia's Senate passed Bill 053-2018, which complements the financial information Habeas Data law approved in 2008 and strengthens the right to Habeas Data, amending the periods during which negative files are held by Credit Rating agencies, making credit information checks free of charge, among others.

We highlight below the most significant aspects of the amendments to the 2008 law:

• The negative datapoint generated by debts lower than or equal to 20% of the minimum monthly wage (about EUR 43) will only be reported after the borrower has been notified at least twice.
• The data owner will be able to check their financial information free of charge, on all occasions and by any means. The continued review of this information by the data owner will under no circumstances  be cause for downgrading their risk category, score or any other kind of measurement; financial or creditworthiness analyses may not be altered, nor may this information be consulted when taking job-related decisions.
• Data on default times, type of payment and situation of the portfolio will be stored for a certain period of time, after which they must be removed from the database by the Data Officer, so that users are prevented from accessing this information. The period this information will be stored will be the same as the period in arrears, and in any case a maximum of two years, starting from the date on which the installments due were paid, or the debt was canceled. Note that under the current regulations the period during which data is held is 4 years.
• The data will expire after five years, starting from the date on which the debt went into arrears; after this term it must be erased from the database.