Debt review is one of those industries full of jargon and acronyms.
CIF stands for the Credit Industry Forum.
The CIF was established by industry role players (credit providers, Debt Counsellors, credit bureaus, PDAs, consumer activist groups and attorneys) in order to address the many issues that are mentioned in the National Credit Act but not clearly defined. This often creates confusion and backlogs in the industry as everyone does things their own way with little though to how others are doing things.
The idea was to have a forum that could discuss such issues and make proposals and suggestions to the National Credit Regulator (NCR).
The NCR would then be able to make a non binding suggestions to the whole industry with input from many of the very largest role players.
Most of the banks and large credit providers stick to these guidelines so it can create a sense of uniformity across the industry (though these things are not legally binding).
