CAIS
CAIS stands for Credit Account Information Sharing and is pronounced ‘keys’.
CAIS is the brand name given to the shared database of credit history maintained by Experian. The Equifax equivalent is Insight and the Callcredit equivalent is Share.
This information is shared with your consent, which you normally give when you apply for credit. It is used primarily for the assessment of credit applications, in particular to help prevent over-indebtedness, for the prevention and detection of fraud and for the tracing of goneaways.
How you conduct a credit account is recorded monthly and forwarded by 200 or so lenders, phone companies and other companies and is shared with all others who do likewise, so that a better informed decision can be made when you apply for credit.
Because CAIS data is owned by the lenders, the use of it is governed by the Principles of Reciprocity, under a supervisory committee called SCOR (Standing Committee on Reciprocity). Each member must supply information on the payment performance of its customers in order to access the information provided by other members.