Some structures were being built in Preah Sihanouk province earlier this year. Heng Chivoan
Credit Bureau (Cambodia) Co Ltd (CBC) and VTrust Appraisal Co Ltd have teamed up to develop and launch Digital Real Estate Appraisal (Indication Plus Platform), a locally first-of-its-kind property valuation service, to tap into the rapid development of the Kingdom’s construction and real estate sector and provide financial institutions with a suite of tech-enabled solutions to evaluate their clients’ assets.
The underlying partnership agreement was signed by CBC CEO Oeur Sothearoath and VTrust chairman Vong Sokhal during the September 30 launch at a ceremony held in conjunction with the financial information provider’s 10th Anniversary Business Forum, according to a joint statement issued on October 5.
Sokhal said in the statement that the deal would open up wider access to finance for Cambodians, as an avenue for VTrust to digitise the property valuation process across the domestic financial sector.
“As Cambodia is digitalising at a rapid pace, we have combined our almost two decades of experience in property valuation with [the] latest technologies to benefit the Cambodian borrowers as well as lenders through convenient and affordable property valuation,” he said.
Likewise, Sothearoath expressed CBC’s commitment “to harnessing digitalisation and data analytics to enable quick and frictionless decision-making for our members to quickly make credit risk assessments and decisions.
“Digital Real Estate Appraisal, through our collaboration with VTrust, will be an important addition to our portfolio of Value-Added Solutions to enable our members to quickly assess credit risks using credit histories and property valuation to make loan decisions conveniently and quickly,” the statement quoted him as saying.
The statement added: “CBC reports indicate that mortgage also comprises more than 50 per cent of the overall consumer credit balance portfolio. Additionally, more than 50 per cent of the financial industry’s lending is secured loan and majority of which is backed by land title-based collateral.
“The digital real estate appraisal solution relies on extensive real estate data compiled historically through extensive years of operations of VTrust powered by latest data analytics modelling.
“In order to use this service, lenders simply need to access the digital platform and submit property details such as location, area, dimensions and images. The system will digitally assess the input information and generate an indicative value of the property which can be used for collateral valuation,” it said.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Economy and Finance recently reported that a total of 1,679 new construction projects were approved nationwide in the first five months of 2022, down by 150 developments or 8.20 per cent year-on-year.
The investment commitment for the projects stood at $952 million, representing a 59.5 per cent year-on-year drop from $2.35 billion. Nearly 90.77 per cent of the projects, or 1,524, were for residential developments, marking a 5.16 per cent drop from 1,607 in January-May 2021.
