It is now a common feature in retail finance that lending firms exchange information about their customers and process a growing amount of personal data. For so me time, the sharing of customers’ credit data has become the most extensively used instrument or practice of the lending industry to underwrite decisions on credit or the supply of goods and/or services to consumers that will be repaid in full at a later stage, or that tie them in a contractual relationship over time. Lenders access databases an d other data managed by third-party prov