The credit reporting industry is confident that the comprehensive system can reach "critical mass" under current voluntary arrangements and meet the deadline set by the Productivity Commission for a move to a mandatory system.One of the issues addressed by the commission in its draft report on improving the use of public and private sector data, Data Availability and Use, is whether comprehensive credit reporting should be mandatory.The commission supports comprehensive credit reporting, accepting the proposition that addressing the information asymmetry between lenders and borrowers leads to better credit decisions."The case for CCR rests on the public interest that is likely to be served if the system is more complete, enabling both more accurate rating of a consumer's credit status and more efficient allocation of resource," the report said.The commission supports a voluntary approach to data input in the CCR system but it has recommended that the Government should make the system mandatory if it does not reach "critical mass".It said the Government should adopt a minimum target for voluntary participation of 40 per cent of accounts by June next year.Experian's managing director of credit services and decision analytics, David Grafton, said there were nine financial institutions feeding comprehensive credit data into Experian's bureau.That data covers around eight million accounts and represents about 25 per cent of the market.Earlier this year Veda supplied numbers that were broadly in line with Experian's figures.One of the major banks, National Australia Bank, is understood to be one of the nine.Grafton said another of the big banks was "keen to move forward on this.""By Christmas we expect to have two of the Big Four providing comprehensive data. We think that would get us to 40 per cent of the credit card market, which is the market where there is greatest interest," he said.Grafton said there were about 20 financial institutions across the industry working on CCR projects. "There is a lot going on under the surface. The programs that will allow them to consume comprehensive data are very long term." The industry is divided over whether participation in CCR should be mandatory. A lot of the push for a compulsory system has come from fintechs, which have most to gain by having access to an expanded data set.The Customer Owned Banking Association argued in its submission to the commission that mandatory reporting would impose too big a burden on some small financial institutions because of the IT investment required.The commission said: "For a major institution with significant data holdings, early and full participation may provide, at least initially, relatively low benefits in will certainly incur costs. For small or new participants, participation would provide access to a greater pool of data with potentially significant benefits."