What Debt Review Does to Your Credit Record
Pick where you are in the process and see what is on your credit record at that stage, and what the law requires to happen to it. Everything below is tied to a section of the National Credit Act, so you can check it and quote it if someone tells you otherwise.
Where are you?
You have not applied yet
What is on your credit record
- Whatever is already there: your credit agreements, your payment profile, and any defaults or judgments that have already been recorded.
- No debt review record, because nothing has been filed.
What that means
- If you already have defaults or a judgment recorded, those are on your record independently of debt review. Debt review did not put them there, and avoiding debt review does not remove them.
- Section 71A is worth knowing about now: when you settle an obligation that carried an adverse listing or a judgment debt, the credit provider must tell all registered credit bureaux within seven days, and the bureau must remove the listing within seven days of receiving that information.
The removal provisions in full
These are the two provisions worth knowing by number, because they are what you cite if a bureau or a credit provider tells you something has to stay on your record.
- Section 71(5). On receiving a copy of a clearance certificate, a credit bureau or the national credit register must expunge the fact that you were subject to the debt re-arrangement order or agreement, any information relating to any default by you that precipitated the re-arrangement or was considered in making it, and any record that a particular credit agreement was subject to it.
- Section 71A. Where an obligation carried an adverse classification, an adverse listing in your payment profile, or a judgment debt, the credit provider must submit settlement information to all registered credit bureaux within seven days of settlement, and the bureau must remove the adverse listing within seven days of receiving it. If the credit provider fails to submit it, you may lodge a complaint with the NCR.
Section 71(7) also makes failure by a credit bureau to comply with a notice issued under section 55, in relation to section 71, an offence.
What a clean record does and does not buy you
Removal of the records listed in section 71(5) is a legal entitlement. Approval for credit is not. Credit providers make their own lending decisions on their own criteria, including affordability assessments the Act requires them to perform. A clean bureau record is a better starting point, not a guarantee of anything.
The realistic rebuilding sequence is unglamorous: verify the record was actually cleared, build a cash buffer before you build credit, and take on new credit slowly and only where you have run the affordability yourself.
Related
The regulator
OurPower is not a debt counsellor and is not registered with the National Credit Regulator. This page is general information about South African debt review law, not financial, legal or debt counselling advice. Debt review is not the right answer for everyone. Only an NCR-registered debt counsellor or a court can determine whether you are over-indebted. Legislation verified 2026-08-15. Sources: National Credit Act 34 of 2005 and the National Credit Regulations.