BKR credit registration: how to check it, and when it can be removed

Written by Onur Arslan, attorney at Arslan Advocaten. Registered in the legal practice areas register of the Netherlands Bar for employment law and personal injury. Last updated: 1 September 2026.

If you live and work in the Netherlands, a Dutch database probably holds a record of every loan, credit card, phone instalment plan and car lease in your name — and you have probably never seen it. That database is the CKI, kept by the BKR. Most people discover it only when an application is refused.

This page shows you how to look at your own record and read it, and then explains when a registration can actually be removed and when it cannot — including the parts expats routinely get wrong.

What is the BKR, and is it a government body?

The BKR — Bureau Krediet Registratie — is a private Dutch foundation (stichting) that keeps the Central Credit Information System (Centraal Krediet Informatiesysteem, CKI); it is not a government body, not a regulator, and it does not decide whether you get credit. It keeps the register. The data in it is supplied by the lenders that participate, which the BKR calls its "business customers" (zakelijke klanten).

That distinction matters more than it sounds. Because the BKR only holds data that someone else supplied, it is not the party you argue with when something is wrong. The lender that filed the entry is.

Participation is not voluntary for lenders. Article 4:32(1) of the Financial Supervision Act (Wet op het financieel toezicht, Wft) requires a provider of credit to participate in a credit registration system open to credit providers established in any EU member state on the same terms. And article 4:34 Wft requires a lender, before entering into a credit agreement or significantly raising a credit limit, to obtain information about your financial position and assess — in order to prevent over-lending (overkreditering) — whether the agreement is responsible.

So the register serves two purposes at once: protecting lenders against non-payment, and protecting consumers against borrowing more than they can carry. Keep both in mind, because the entire law on removal turns on them.

Those reporting to the BKR are, as a rule, banks, finance companies, consumer credit providers, credit card companies, providers of overdraft facilities, private lease (operational car lease) companies, and municipalities carrying out statutory debt assistance (schuldhulpverlening).

What the BKR does not hold. It is not a score. There is no "BKR score" and no rating. The CKI holds facts: which contracts exist, for what amount, running since when, and whether anything went wrong. What a lender concludes from those facts is entirely the lender's own judgement.

Party	Role	What you can achieve there
BKR (the foundation)	keeps the register, gives you your overview	inspection; as a rule no substantive change
The lender (kredietverstrekker)	files, amends and deletes the entry	the actual removal request
Kifid (financial services complaints board)	decides disputes with credit providers falling under the Wft	a ruling after your request is refused
Geschillencommissie Private Lease	disputes with lease companies affiliated to the Keurmerk Private Lease	the same, for private lease
The court	decides bindingly, including in summary proceedings	an order to remove
Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens)	supervises data processing	supervision, not a route to get your own entry removed

How do I request my own BKR overview, and what do I get back?

You can view your own credit overview free of charge online at mijnkredietregistratie.nl, identifying yourself once with iDIN — your bank's identification service, not DigiD. This is your right of access under Article 15 GDPR (in Dutch: AVG), worked out in article 28 of the BKR's General Regulation CKI (Algemeen Reglement CKI). You create an account once and you are in.

In three steps:

1. Go to mijnkredietregistratie.nl and create an account. You identify yourself with iDIN, which routes you through the login of your own Dutch bank. Not every bank supports iDIN.
2. Confirm your details — name, date of birth, address. The register works on name, birth name, date of birth, sex and address, so an old address can matter.
3. Open your overview. You see every contract, its dates, and any arrears or special codes attached to it.

If you have no Dutch bank account, or no Dutch address. The BKR confirms that a request from abroad is possible. With a Dutch bank account you log in online as normal. Without one, you complete the form online, print it, and send it in with a copy of your identity document. The BKR asks you to redact what it does not need: "We do not need your citizen service number or photo, so please cover those." The Dutch government's KopieID app does this for you with a watermark.

One warning that catches every expat. The overview is issued in Dutch only. The BKR publishes an English glossary, but the document itself will not be in English — and the dates and codes are exactly the part that decides your case.

Viewing online is free. A certified overview (gewaarmerkt kredietoverzicht), which you may need for a formal procedure, costs € 17.50 and arrives by post within days. The BKR handles requests within the statutory GDPR deadlines.

Practical: request your overview before you have any advice conversation. Without it, any discussion of your chances is guesswork.

How do I read my BKR overview?

Your overview is a factual list, not a verdict — and four things on it decide your case: which contracts appear, the dates, the special codes, and which lender filed each entry. Read it in that order.

1. The contracts. Each line shows a type of credit, the lender, a contract number, and an amount — the original loan amount, or the credit limit for revolving credit. For revolving credit and credit cards the register shows the limit, not what you have actually drawn. A card you never use still consumes borrowing capacity.

2. The dates. These matter more than anything else on the page, and this is where people misread their own file:

Date	What it is	Why it matters
Start date of the contract	when the credit began	sets the context, little more
Actual end date (werkelijke einddatum)	when the contract actually ended	for most entries, the retention period runs from here
Registration date of the arrears	when the lender filed the arrears	not the date the arrears arose
Registration date of the recovery code (H)	when the lender filed that you caught up	for many entries, this is the date the five years run from

Read those dates precisely. A recovery filed on 1 March does not mean the entry expires on 1 March — it means a fresh five-year period starts.

3. The special codes. The A and H entries, explained in the next section.

4. Who filed it. The name of the lender. That party — not the BKR — is your counterparty in everything that follows.

What else you are entitled to ask for. Beyond the overview, you can ask the lender for the underlying file: the credit agreement, the reminders, the correspondence, and the proof that you were warned in advance that an entry would be filed. That last document matters enormously, and it is missing more often than you would expect. Article 39(2) of the General Regulation CKI obliges the lender to warn you in writing beforehand that non-payment will lead to an arrears entry at the BKR, and article 39(3) requires it to be able to demonstrate that this pre-announcement (vooraankondiging) was sent — by producing a copy of the message or a print from its system. Note the limit: under article 13(4), the pre-announcement requirement does not apply to the filing of a special code.

Your GDPR rights here are access (Article 15), rectification (Article 16), erasure (Article 17), restriction of processing while your request is pending (Article 18) and objection (Article 21). The General Regulation CKI works these out in articles 27 to 31 and obliges the lender to cooperate.

What do the codes A, A1 to A5 and H mean?

The letter tells you what happened; the number is a separate special code telling you what the lender did next. "A2" is therefore not a code in its own right — it is an arrears entry plus special code 2. Getting this wrong is the single most common misunderstanding on this subject, and it leads people to argue about the wrong thing.

What you see	What it means
A	achterstand — an arrears entry: you fell behind on repayments and you should have received an advance written warning
A1	code 1 — a repayment arrangement was agreed after arrears had arisen
A2	code 2 — the lender demanded payment of the remainder or of the whole claim, in accordance with the applicable statutory requirements
A3	code 3 — the lender wrote off or waived an amount of € 250 or more
A4	code 4 — the consumer proved to be unreachable
A5	code 5 — you and the lender agreed a written preventive payment arrangement on a mortgage for at least four months
H	herstelmelding — recovery: you cleared the arrears while the credit was still running

Source: General Regulation CKI (July 2024), articles 12 and 13.

Two things people miss. First, combinations are possible — article 13(2) says so expressly, so you can see a 2 and a 3 on the same contract. Second, code 5 is not a bad code: it records a preventive arrangement on a mortgage, which is what a responsible borrower does.

The weight increases as you go down. An A1 shows you agreed a plan and stuck to it, and a lender reads that very differently from an A2 or A3, where the relationship broke down. An A4 is often the most damaging, because it suggests you made yourself unreachable — and in practice there is frequently a house move or a wrong address behind it. That makes A4 relatively often worth challenging.

Code 3 has a specific rule attached. If the write-off comes with final discharge (finale kwijting) — you owe nothing further — the lender must at the same time report the end of the agreement with an actual end date. If that has not happened, that is a point worth raising on its own, because the retention period hangs on that end date.

For illustration. Someone moves house and forgets to give the new address to the provider of a small revolving credit. The reminders and the advance warning go to the old address; he never reads them. Because nothing comes back and he appears unreachable, a code 4 is added alongside the arrears — the entry that suggests someone made himself unreachable. Legally it then comes down to two questions: did the required warning actually reach him, and can the lender demonstrate that it was sent? That is the difference between a code that is justified and one that at the very least deserves to be adjusted to a lighter entry. This is an illustrative situation explaining the rule, not a case of our firm.

Is an H recovery code a clean slate?

No. A recovery code shows that you cleared the arrears, but the registration stays visible — including the original arrears — until the retention period expires. This is the misunderstanding that costs people the most, because it makes them relax at exactly the moment they should be acting.

The H does not erase the A. It sits next to it. A lender looking at your file sees an arrears entry and, next to it, a note that you caught up. Whether that is enough depends on the lender's policy and on how much time has passed.

Worse, the recovery code can extend how long you are visible. For a running agreement the five years run from the registration date of the recovery entry, not from the arrears. Catching up late means being visible late.

There is a real benefit to it, though: under the National Mortgage Guarantee rules discussed below, an A or A1 with a recovery code can still be acceptable where an uncleared arrears entry is not. So the H is worth having. It is simply not the end of the story.

How long does a BKR registration stay, and from when does the period run?

As a rule five years — but counted from the settlement of the problem, not from when it arose. That is the part that stings: if you take two years to clear arrears, you are then looking at five more years from that point.

The period attaches to the agreement, not to the code. Even after you have paid everything off and an H has been filed, the whole file — including the old arrears — remains visible. That is why people who repaid their debts scrupulously still get turned down for a mortgage years later.

Where the period starts, as article 14 of the General Regulation CKI sets it out:

What	When it leaves the CKI
An ended agreement	five years after the actual end date of the agreement
Arrears and recovery entry on an ended agreement	five years after the registration date of the recovery entry, in so far as the arrears were registered before that recovery entry
Arrears without a recovery entry on an ended agreement, or registered after the recovery entry	five years after the actual end date of the agreement
Recovery entry on a running agreement	five years after the registration date of the recovery entry
Arrears on a running agreement with a current recovery entry	five years after the registration date of the recovery entry
Arrears on a running agreement without a current recovery entry	not removed automatically after five years, but put to the lender for assessment
Special codes	the same system: five years after the recovery entry, or five years after the actual end date
All data after death	one year after the death is reported

Source: General Regulation CKI (July 2024), article 14.

Look closely at that sixth row. On a running agreement without a recovery entry, arrears do not simply drop off after five years. Article 14(3) says they are "put to the lender for assessment" (ter beoordeling aan de zakelijke klant voorgelegd). The same goes for special codes under article 14(6). That is not automatic cleaning — it is a decision moment, and therefore also a natural opening for a request.

One further mechanic worth knowing: under article 14(3), where a "negatively" registered running agreement has no arrears or special code registered after the recovery entry, the entire agreement is removed from the CKI. Not just the code — the whole contract line.

What is registered, and what is not?

Any agreement with a term longer than one month, as a rule from an amount above € 250 — and yes, that includes private car lease, which surprises almost everyone. Lenders must report within 21 days of the relevant fact occurring (article 11).

What is registered:

Type	Notes
Personal loan (aflopend krediet, AK)	above € 250, with term and total amount
Revolving credit (doorlopend krediet, RK)	above a limit of € 250 — the limit, not what you drew
Overdraft facility on a current account	as revolving credit, above a € 250 limit
Credit card with spread payment	above a € 250 limit
Mail-order and "buy now, pay later" credit	with a credit characteristic, above € 250
Car finance	financial lease and classic car loans, above € 250
Private lease of a car (operational car lease, OA)	above € 250 total contract amount — see below
Phone contract with a handset over € 250	the handset credit is registered
Own-home mortgage (HY)	in principle only negative payment experience — arrears and/or a special code — and without the amount. A mortgage with no arrears is not in there
Mortgage on other property (HO)	with amount and term, above € 250
Residual debt after selling the home (RH / RN)	above € 250, with and without national mortgage guarantee
Debt restructuring loan (SK)	above € 250
Municipal debt assistance (SH)	the municipal decision admitting you to the programme

What people get wrong:

What people assume	How it actually works
Phone contract without a handset	the subscription itself is not registered; a handset over € 250 paid in instalments is
Private lease of a car	it is registered, in the BKR itself, as an operational car lease (article 22). Since 1 April 2022 the full 100% of the total contract amount is registered; under older contracts it was 65%
Student loan from DUO	not in the BKR — but lenders ask about it separately
Rent arrears	in principle not
Tax debt	in principle not
Health insurance arrears	in principle not: arrears with an insurer are not filed in the CKI
Money borrowed from family or friends	not
Fines and debt collection	in principle not, unless they arise from a registered credit

Private lease is the trap. It looks like a subscription: you do not own the car, you pay a monthly fee, nobody uses the word "loan". But article 22 of the General Regulation CKI treats it as a reportable agreement, and the registered amount is the sum of all instalments over the whole term — for a three-year lease, a substantial figure sitting against your borrowing capacity. Expats who lease a car in their first year here and apply for a mortgage in their third regularly discover this at the worst possible moment.

The reverse trap is just as common. People who fail a mortgage application assume "everything" is in the BKR, when the blockage comes from elsewhere entirely: a DUO student loan, a maintenance obligation, or a debt the lender read off your bank statements. Before starting a removal procedure, establish that the BKR entry really is the obstacle.

What does a BKR registration do to a mortgage application?

As a rule an active arrears code means refusal; after recovery it depends on the code, the time elapsed and the individual lender's policy. Lenders consult the BKR as standard — they are obliged to participate in the system and obliged to assess your capacity to repay.

What is on the overview	How a lender as a rule handles it
Running credit with no arrears	counts against your borrowing capacity, but is not a refusal in itself
Active A code, debt still running	as a rule refusal while the arrears stand
A with H, recently cleared	case by case; with the national mortgage guarantee an A or A1 with a recovery code is expressly allowed (see below)
A2, A3 or A4 with H	weighed more heavily than an A1; case by case, often still refusal
Registration expired or removed	no longer visible; the application is judged on the ordinary grounds

One statutory right almost nobody uses. If a lender decides, on the basis of consulting the credit registration system, not to grant you credit, article 4:32(2) Wft obliges it to inform you immediately and free of charge of the result of that consultation and of the details of the database consulted. You are therefore entitled to be told, in writing, that the BKR was the reason. That letter is the single most useful piece of evidence you can have when you later argue that the entry causes you concrete harm. Ask for it every time.

How far back do lenders look? Only at what is in the register at that moment. Once the retention period runs out, the entry is in principle no longer visible. But there is a second channel people underestimate: the bank statements you submit with your application. An adviser can read a repayment plan or a collection agency direct debit straight off them. A removed registration is no guarantee of a clean application if the underlying situation is still visible.

National Mortgage Guarantee (NHG). For applications with the national mortgage guarantee, separate written conditions apply. Under the Voorwaarden en Normen NHG 2026-1 (paragraph C.3.4), a lender may not grant a loan with NHG where there is a BKR registration with special code 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5, nor where there is a running debt arrangement with code SK or SH.

With an A or A1 code it is permitted, provided one of these applies:

• the loan carries a recovery code (H); or
• the registration shows the loan has been repaid, and not repaid by refinancing into a new running loan; or
• the lender has declared that there are no further arrears or that the loan has been repaid, without refinancing arrears into a new running loan.

NHG also recognises exceptions for registrations with a practical final repayment date after final discharge (including HY 2, HY 3 and RN 3), and for a statutory debt restructuring programme (Wsnp) completed with a clean slate, provided at least one year has since passed.

That is why the recovery code is concretely valuable for an NHG application — and equally why a 2, 3 or 4 code that stays in place makes an NHG mortgage in principle impossible while it is there.

Practical: have your registration assessed before you make an offer on a house, not after. A purchase agreement with a financing condition (financieringsvoorbehoud) of a few weeks is far too short for a removal procedure.

Where else will I notice a registration — car finance, rental, work?

Everywhere someone wants to test your creditworthiness — but the register itself is only disclosed to affiliated lenders, not to landlords or employers. How heavily it lands varies sharply by sector.

Where you notice it	What as a rule happens
Car finance and financial lease	the provider consults the BKR; an active code as a rule means refusal
Private lease	the lease company both consults the BKR and files the contract itself as a registered agreement
Phone contract with a handset over € 250	the handset credit is registered, and a check is run on application
Revolving credit or credit card	a new application is as a rule refused with an active code
Rental through an agent or institutional landlord	some landlords ask you to hand over a credit overview. The BKR does not supply your data to landlords; anything they see is an overview you requested and gave them yourself
Employer screening	not standard practice; the BKR does not supply data to employers
Business credit as a freelancer	a private registration can weigh in the assessment

The rental point affects expats disproportionately. In tight rental markets, agents and institutional landlords increasingly ask applicants for a credit overview. They have no access to the CKI: under article 6 of the General Regulation CKI, the BKR may supply data only to its business customers, their processors, the consumer, persons and institutions with a statutory basis, and designated supervisory bodies. A landlord is none of those. So if a landlord has your overview, it is because you handed it over. You are entitled to refuse — and equally entitled to know that refusing may cost you the property. It is an unpleasant choice, but it is yours.

There is an upside here. The concrete harm you must substantiate in a removal request often comes from exactly this corner. A refusal for a lease car you need for work, or a rental property you lost, is just as usable as a refused mortgage — provided you have it on paper.

When can a BKR registration be removed?

Removal is possible where the registration is factually incorrect, or where a correct registration turns out to be disproportionate after a careful weighing of interests — and the sector's own rulebook says so. Article 14(10) of the General Regulation CKI prohibits a lender from removing a contract, arrears, recovery code or special code, unless there is:

• an incorrect registration (een onterechte registratie);
• a correct registration which, "after a careful weighing of interests on the basis of available data about individual circumstances, proves to be disproportionate" (disproportioneel);
• a ruling of a court or a competent disputes committee ordering removal or adjustment.

That is a useful sentence to quote in your letter, because it is the industry's own text and it concedes the point: correctness is not the end of the analysis.

The test the Dutch courts apply is proportionality and subsidiarity: the interference with the interests of the data subject may not be disproportionate in relation to the purpose served by the processing, and that purpose must not reasonably be achievable in another way that is less harmful to the data subject (Hoge Raad 9 September 2011, ECLI:NL:HR:2011:BQ8097, applied in for example Rechtbank Noord-Holland, ECLI:NL:RBNHO:2020:3853).

Two points from the case law reframe how you should argue.

First, a registration being justified does not protect it. In Rechtbank Midden-Nederland, ECLI:NL:RBMNE:2020:5914, the court held the entries had been correctly filed — the claimant had genuinely been in arrears — and then held they nonetheless had to be removed, because a justified registration must also be removed where the purpose it serves no longer outweighs the interests of the person concerned in having it removed. The same reasoning appears in ECLI:NL:RBMNE:2019:2434.

Second, it is not a contest between you and the bank. The Court of Appeal Arnhem-Leeuwarden put it precisely in ECLI:NL:GHARL:2020:4769: the question "is not so much a weighing of the interests as between Rabobank and the appellant, but a testing of the purpose of the registrations of the codes against the principles of proportionality and subsidiarity". The lender's inconvenience is not the counterweight. The purpose of the register is.

So the strongest requests are all built the same way: show that the purpose — protecting lenders from non-payment and consumers from over-lending — no longer meaningfully needs this entry in your case, while the harm to you is concrete and documented.

When a request has a real chance:

Situation	Chance
The registration is factually wrong	high
You were never warned in advance, and the lender cannot prove it sent the warning	reasonable
The arrears were cleared long ago	depends on the circumstances
You can demonstrably not get housing or finance because of it	weighs in the balance
The registration is recent and the debt is still running	small

This is not a points system. There is no threshold above which removal "must" follow. Two people with almost identical codes can get different outcomes, simply because one could evidence the harm and the other could not.

What makes a removal request strong?

Documents, not narrative. Once you have filed a reasoned objection, part of the burden shifts to the lender to explain why maintaining the entry is still necessary in your specific case. A standard reply along the lines of "the registration is correct, so it stays" does not answer that question — and that is precisely the point a court will want to see addressed.

What is weighed, in practice:

Factor	What it turns on	What makes it strong
Nature and size of the debt	small arrears on a small credit weigh differently from a large write-off	make the ratio between amount and consequence concrete
Time elapsed	how long ago the arrears arose, and how long ago they were cleared	the dates from the overview, not from memory
Whether the debt was cleared	fully repaid weighs more than partly, or written off	discharge or final statement from the lender
Culpability	did the arrears arise through circumstances outside your control	illness, dismissal, divorce, an employer's insolvency — with documents
Conduct since	have you demonstrably behaved well since	years of timely payments, no new entries
Current financial position	is the risk the entry protects against still there	permanent contract, income data, savings, low outgoings
Concrete harm	what can you demonstrably not do	refusals on paper, not "I was told it wouldn't work"
Advance warning	were you warned before the entry was filed	its absence is an argument in its own right
The lender's interest	what purpose does maintaining it still serve	forces the other side to give a substantive answer

What to collect: refusal letters naming the registration as the reason (article 4:32(2) Wft entitles you to that in writing); a purchase or rental agreement at risk of collapsing; evidence of your current income and outgoings; documents on the cause of the arrears, such as a termination letter, a period of illness or a divorce settlement; a payment history showing everything paid on time since; and correspondence showing the lender did not warn you, or warned you at the wrong address.

For illustration. Someone lost their job years ago and fell a few months behind on a personal loan. The arrears were cleared, the loan was repaid, and nothing has gone wrong since. Now they want to buy a house with their partner, and the application fails on what is still in the register. The question is not whether the entry was correct at the time — it was — but whether maintaining it today still contributes to the purpose of the register: protection against over-lending and non-payment. As the debt has been settled and the situation has demonstrably changed, that purpose weighs less and the harm weighs more. What carries the balance is documents: the refusal on paper, the income data, the payment history. This is an illustrative situation explaining the rule, not a case of our firm.

Who do I apply to — the BKR or the lender?

The lender that filed the entry, never the BKR. The BKR keeps the register but does not change it on its own initiative. A letter to the BKR will as a rule get you nothing beyond a reply telling you to contact your lender.

This is not a formality. Only the lender holds the file — the agreement, the reminders, the payment history, the internal notes. Only that party can judge whether the entry is correct, and only that party can weigh whether maintaining it is still proportionate in your case. Article 14(10) of the General Regulation CKI puts the power to remove squarely with the lender.

One nuance: if the entry is factually wrong and the lender accepts that, the correction is then executed through the BKR — but on the lender's instruction. So you still write to the lender.

What belongs in the letter. A usable request is short but complete: which registration it concerns (contract number, dates, code), what you are asking for (removal, or in the alternative adjustment of the code to a lighter one), on what ground, what concrete harm you suffer, and which documents you enclose. Set a reasonable deadline and ask for a reasoned decision — not for "a response". That distinction matters the moment the case goes further: a refusal without reasons is a weak document for the other side.

What not to do is dress the request up as a complaint about how things went at the time. Grievances about the collection process, the tone of the letters or the interest charged distract from the only question that counts: does maintaining this entry today still outweigh your harm?

What if the lender refuses — complaint or court?

The BKR has no disputes committee of its own. Article 31 of the General Regulation CKI names four addresses for a complaint about the processing of your data:

• Kifid, the financial services complaints institute designated by the Minister of Finance, in so far as it concerns credit providers falling under the Wft — this is the usual route;
• the Geschillencommissie Private Lease, for lease companies affiliated to the Keurmerk Private Lease;
• the municipality that filed the entry under the statutory debt assistance framework;
• the Dutch Data Protection Authority.

And, under article 31(2), you may go to the competent court.

The Kifid route is written, considerably cheaper and lower-threshold than court. You first exhaust the lender's internal complaints procedure, which is a condition of admissibility. You then file with Kifid within one year of raising the complaint with your provider, or within three months of its refusal letter. The other side responds, there is usually a written round of reply and rejoinder, sometimes a hearing, and the outcome is normally a binding opinion (bindend advies) — both you and the provider indicate whether you want it to be binding. If it is not, the court remains open. Low cost, no obligation to be represented, and a substantive assessment of the balance of interests; but slower than summary proceedings, which is exactly wrong under time pressure.

The court route normally means summary proceedings (kort geding), because urgency is easy to establish here: a live mortgage application, a purchase agreement with a financing deadline, or an imminent rental refusal makes it plausible that you cannot wait for full proceedings.

What you claim	Why
Removal of the special code	the actual objective
In the alternative: adjustment of the code	for example from A2 or A4 to a lighter entry
In the alternative: removal of the whole contract line	where the contract itself is wrongly registered
A deadline for compliance	otherwise execution drifts
A penalty payment (dwangsom)	to enforce compliance
Costs	as a rule for the losing party

What you must show is that the registration is incorrect, or that maintaining it is no longer proportionate. The second is the usual route and it stands or falls on the documents: summary proceedings leave no room for extensive evidence, so what you do not have on paper at the outset does not, in practice, count.

The downside. Summary proceedings produce an interim measure; the other side can in principle still start full proceedings. In this type of case that rarely happens, but it is not a guarantee. The losing party as a rule bears the costs, so a poorly substantiated case costs you twice. Court registry fees (griffierecht) apply and are indexed annually.

Can anyone guarantee my registration will be removed?

No — and anyone who promises a guaranteed result for a fee up front is selling something they cannot deliver. This is a market with many providers advertising "BKR entry removed, no cure no pay" against a fixed advance payment. An honest warning belongs here, because the people typing this search are by definition under pressure.

• "Guaranteed removal." Nobody can promise this. The decision sits with the lender, the disputes body or the court — not with your service provider.
• Payment up front, result later. Always ask exactly what happens for that money, and what happens if the request is refused.
• "No cure no pay" at a high percentage. For a Dutch attorney that arrangement is bound by strict professional rules; for non-attorneys it is not. Ask for the amount in euros, not the percentage.
• No attorney on the other side of the desk. Only an attorney (advocaat) can represent you in court proceedings and is answerable to the Bar's disciplinary system for what they promise.
• Standard letters. A request that does not address your circumstances and your harm is as a rule refused as a matter of routine. You then pay for a letter that moves the case nowhere — and you have spent your best shot, the first round.
• Ask for an honest no. A provider who never tells you your case is hopeless earns money from hopeless cases.

What decides a removal case is not who sends the letter but the quality of the substantiation. Anyone who promises a fixed outcome for a fee is, by definition, leaving out the balance of interests — the only thing that legally matters.

I am leaving the Netherlands — does the registration follow me abroad?

It does not travel with you automatically, but it does not disappear either, and within the EU it is reachable — so treat "I am moving away" as a reason to sort it out now, not a reason to ignore it. This is the question expats ask most and get the vaguest answers to, so here is what can actually be verified.

What is certain:

• The entry stays in the Dutch register and keeps running its retention period. Article 14 of the General Regulation CKI ties removal to the end date of the agreement or the recovery entry. Nothing in it makes emigration a trigger for deletion. Leaving does not reset the clock, and it does not start it either.
• You can still access your own record from abroad. The BKR confirms this expressly: with a Dutch bank account you log in online as usual; without one you complete the request form, print it, and post it with a redacted copy of your identity document.
• Within the EU, the register is reachable. This is the part that surprises people. Under article 42 of the General Regulation CKI, the BKR may enter into a cooperation agreement with another credit information bureau, and an institution established in another EU member state that is not a BKR business customer can obtain information from the CKI via the credit bureau of the member state where it is established, within the applicable legal and regulatory frameworks. Article 42(3) limits this: no information is supplied to a credit bureau in another member state if that institution could not qualify as a business customer, or if the request does not match the purpose for which the data may be processed. So it is conditional and channelled — but it is not a wall.
• Outside the EU it is much tighter. Article 34(4) provides that the BKR does not transfer personal data from the CKI to a country outside the European Union until it has been established that the country offers an adequate level of protection under the GDPR and has the necessary technical and organisational safeguards in place, or the transfer takes place on the basis of a completed EU Standard Contract — and only where the Board has expressly decided so, recorded in a board resolution.
• A Dutch lender will still see it if you come back. If you return to the Netherlands, or apply to a Dutch lender from abroad, the entry is simply there.

What you must check for yourself, and what we will not guess at: whether the credit bureau in the specific country you are moving to actually has such an arrangement with the BKR, and what a lender there will in practice be shown. That depends on the country, on that bureau's own rules, and on the individual lender. Do not assume either that your Dutch history is invisible or that it is fully visible. Ask the credit bureau of your destination country directly what it holds on you, and request your Dutch overview before you go.

The practical conclusion. The worst option is to leave an unresolved arrears entry behind and hope distance solves it. It does not: the five years keep running, the file gets harder to reconstruct from abroad, the staff who handled it move on, and your evidence gets scattered across two countries. Clear the arrears if you can, obtain the recovery entry, request a certified overview before you leave, and keep a copy of the underlying file.

For illustration. Someone who worked in the Netherlands for several years takes a job in another country. Before leaving, a small revolving credit is cleared and closed. A year later they apply for a car loan abroad and are asked about their financial history. What they can produce matters: a Dutch overview obtained before leaving shows the contract with an end date and no outstanding arrears, whereas a story about a debt "that was sorted out" proves nothing. The legal point is not whether the foreign lender can see the Dutch register — it may or may not be able to — but that the person who can always produce their own record is never the one who has to rely on that question. This is an illustrative situation explaining the rule, not a case of our firm.

What are the most common mistakes?

Most requests fail not on the law but on the approach.

Mistake	Why it goes wrong
Writing to the BKR instead of the lender	the BKR changes nothing on its own initiative; you lose weeks
Waiting until the mortgage application is running	a procedure takes months, a financing condition takes weeks
Not evidencing the harm	"I cannot buy a house" without a refusal on paper carries almost no weight
Not asking for the refusal in writing	article 4:32(2) Wft entitles you to it; without it you have no evidence of harm
Thinking an H closes the matter	the registration stays visible until the retention period expires
Running up new arrears during the procedure	it destroys the argument that your situation has changed
Only complaining about the past	the balance is about today, not about how the collection went
Using a template letter from the internet	refused as standard; you waste your best chance on the first round
Missing deadlines	at Kifid: within one year of complaining to the provider, or three months of its refusal
Assuming the BKR is the problem	sometimes the blockage is a private lease, a student loan, or your bank statements

What do I do, in what order?

1. Request your BKR overview and read the dates and codes precisely.
2. Establish who filed the entry — that is your counterparty.
3. Ask that party for the underlying file: the agreement, the reminders, and the proof that you were warned in advance.
4. Clear the arrears, or get a complied-with arrangement in place, if that is still possible.
5. Collect evidence of your concrete harm and of your current situation: refusal letters, a purchase or rental agreement with its deadline, income and outgoings, payment history since recovery, and documents on the cause of the arrears.
6. Have the chances assessed before you file.
7. File a reasoned request with the lender, with a reasonable deadline.
8. If refused, choose deliberately between Kifid (cheaper, slower) and the court (faster, more expensive).
9. Start early — count on months, not weeks.

What does it cost and how long does it take?

The first assessment of your registration is free of charge with us. We look at your overview and tell you whether a request has a chance. Only then do we discuss cost — because filing a hopeless request costs you money without result.

Stage	What happens	How long
Requesting your overview	you do this yourself at the BKR	a few days
Assessment	we read your overview and your file	—
Request to the lender	reasoned letter with substantiated harm	response as a rule several weeks
Complaint at Kifid	written procedure; Kifid does not charge consumers a complaint fee	Kifid aims to handle a complaint within twelve months; a Disputes Committee ruling usually follows within 90 days of the hearing
Court proceedings	summary proceedings or full proceedings	summary proceedings generally a few weeks

By far the most cases end at the request to the lender. A well-substantiated letter is often enough, and it is also the cheapest route. Count on months rather than days overall — which is exactly why you should not wait until your mortgage application is running.

If your income is low, the Legal Aid Board (Raad voor Rechtsbijstand) may cover part of the cost against a personal contribution. We assess that at the first meeting.

*Read more about our service: BKR-registratie verwijderen.*

Have your registration assessed

Send us your BKR overview. We will tell you whether removal has a chance and what it would take.

Call 070 450 0300 or use arslan.nl/contact. Offices in The Hague, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Tilburg and Eindhoven. Our firm also speaks Turkish and Polish.

This page gives general information and is not legal advice about your own case.

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