Short answer
Repayment does not require a Latvian credit information bureau to erase the historical debt immediately. Section 16(1) of the , the Credit Information Bureau Law, provides a five-year period after payment, another legal extinction of the debt, or a qualifying transfer—but imposes an outer limit of ten years from the first payment-default date.
The bureau must not continue to present the debt as outstanding. Section 12 requires the record to show that the debt no longer exists, the date from which it no longer exists and how it was extinguished. The supplying user must provide current debt information at least quarterly. Repayment therefore triggers an immediate accuracy/update obligation even though the historical entry may remain for the statutory period.
The rule applies specifically to debt-related information. Other fulfilled payment obligations and information copied from public registers follow different retention and deletion rules. A defensible policy must classify the record before calculating its deadline.
The five-year rule and the ten-year outer limit
Section 16(1)(1) states:
Kredītinformācijas birojs ar parādiem saistītas ziņas glabā … piecus gadus pēc parāda samaksas dienas … bet ne ilgāk kā 10 gadus pēc pirmās maksājuma kavējuma dienas.
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The calculation uses two dates:
- five years after the debt was paid, ended on another legal basis, or was assigned or otherwise transferred to a person that is not another credit-information user; and
- ten years after the first payment default.
The earlier deadline controls. If a debt first defaulted on 1 January 2020 and was paid on 1 January 2023, the five-year date is 1 January 2028 and the ten-year outer limit is 1 January 2030; the earlier 2028 date applies. If the same debt was paid on 1 January 2029, the five-year date would be 2034, but the outer limit would still be 1 January 2030.
The Act separately says that unpaid debt information is kept for ten years from the first default. Payment changes which limb applies; it does not restart an unlimited history period.
“Paid” must be recorded as paid
Retention of history does not authorize a false current balance. Section 12(1)(4) requires the bureau database to include:
ziņas par to, ka parāda vairs nav, datums, kopš kura parāda vairs nav, kā arī veids, kādā tas ir dzēsts.
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In substance, the record must say that the debt no longer exists, the date from which that is true and the manner in which it was extinguished. The database also contains the initial and actual debt amounts, first-default date, insertion date and last-update date.
Section 11(5) requires the credit-information user to provide current information about an included debt at least once per quarter. That is only the periodic minimum stated in that provision. Where the bureau or supplier knows that an existing record is inaccurate, the correction duties in Sections 20–22 are also engaged; the historical retention period is not a licence to wait while an outstanding balance remains wrong.
Repayment, extinction and qualifying transfer share the same clock
The five-year trigger is broader than payment. It also covers the date on which the debt obligation ends on another legal basis. That might include a legally effective release, set-off, judgment or other extinguishing event, depending on the underlying facts and law.
The same provision refers to the date on which the debt is assigned or otherwise passes to a person that is not another credit-information user. This is a retention trigger, not a statement that assignment itself pays or extinguishes the debt. A report should distinguish “paid”, “ended on another basis” and “transferred outside the user class” rather than collapsing all three into “settled”.
Where a claim is assigned to another credit-information user, the quoted trigger does not apply merely because ownership changed. The identities, dates, current balance and reporting responsibility need to be reconciled so that the same obligation is not double-counted.
Other fulfilled payment obligations are different
Section 16(3) addresses fulfilled payment-obligation information that is not the debt information governed by Section 16(1) and is not public-register information. The bureau may keep it until the customer asks the supplying user to delete it and the bureau is notified of that request.
The provision contains an important qualification: the customer cannot demand deletion if the user has a lawful basis and statutory purpose for keeping the information in the bureau database. This is therefore not a universal “delete on request” rule, but it is also not the fixed five-year debt rule.
Classification controls the answer:
- a defaulted debt later paid follows Section 16(1);
- other fulfilled obligation history follows Section 16(3); and
- public-register material follows Section 16(4).
Calling all three categories “payment history” obscures different legal deadlines and rights.
Public-register information follows source availability
Section 16(4) permits information obtainable from public or publicly accessible registers to be kept only as long as necessary for the Act's credit-information purposes and no longer than the information remains available in the relevant register.
That rule prevents a bureau from treating an old copy of a public entry as independently permanent after the official source no longer makes it available. It also requires purpose-based necessity rather than automatic retention to the maximum possible source date.
Ending the supplier's bureau agreement does not erase all paid-debt history
Section 17 generally requires the bureau to delete credit information obtained from a former user when their credit-information agreement ends. It expressly preserves debt information that the bureau may keep under Section 16(1), along with certain other payment-obligation information where the obligation ended while the agreement was in force.
kredītinformācijas birojs nekavējoties dzēš … kredītinformāciju, kas ir iegūta no bijušā kredītinformācijas lietotāja, izņemot ziņas par parādu, kuras … ir tiesīgs glabāt saskaņā ar šā likuma 16.panta pirmās daļas 1.punktu.
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The supplier leaving the bureau does not cancel the Section 16 debt-retention rule. It does make correction governance more important. Section 17 provides former-user routes using joint acknowledgments, notarized signatures, final court or arbitral decisions, or a bureau finding that its stored data differs from the former user's information.
Accuracy, retention and lawful basis are separate questions
A retained record can be accurate or inaccurate; a correct record can be held too long; and a record within a numerical retention period can still raise a legal-basis or purpose issue under the GDPR. These questions should be audited separately.
For a repaid debt, the minimum data model should preserve:
- the first-default date;
- payment, legal-extinction or qualifying-transfer date;
- initial and final current amount;
- the method by which the debt ended;
- last supplier update and evidence;
- dispute or judgment status;
- whether the source is a bureau user or a public register; and
- the calculated deletion deadline and rule used.
The report supplied to a lender should clearly distinguish “historical debt, paid” from “currently unpaid”. A score should likewise avoid treating a zero current balance as though it were still collectible, even where the historical event remains lawfully retained.
Interaction with objections and corrections
If payment is not reflected, the individual may submit a written objection to the bureau or the supplying user under Section 22. The bureau marks the information as disputed during review. When a mismatch or error is confirmed, it corrects or deletes the data and promptly informs users that received it during the preceding 12 months.
The remedy depends on the defect. Missing repayment status ordinarily calls for correction of balance, status and dates; mistaken identity may require deletion; expiry of the Section 16 deadline requires deletion; and a continuing dispute may require a marker even if the supplier does not accept the individual's substantive position.
MCP source-quality finding
The production MCP's strict phrase search returned no match and clearly labeled that result strict_phrase_no_match; it did not silently broaden. The supplied retry removed only the phrase constraint, after which keyword Search ranked the current Credit Information Bureau Law first. Exact-source Fetch returned the full retention and repayment-status provisions without truncation. This is the intended Search-to-Fetch behavior, and no defect was filed.
Conclusion
Latvian law keeps repaid debt information for five years after payment or another specified trigger, subject to an absolute ten-year limit from first default. Repayment must nevertheless be reflected promptly: the record must show that no debt remains, when it ended and how. Other fulfilled obligations and public-register information follow different rules. A compliant system therefore needs both accurate current status and a category-specific deletion clock; “paid” does not mean “erase immediately”, but it can never mean “continue reporting as unpaid”.
Sources
This article provides general legal information, not advice for a specific matter. Laws, facts and procedural deadlines may change the result. Follow the linked primary sources and obtain local advice before acting.