If the lessons of the past five years are to be fully absorbed by consumers, it is that greed and overspending leads to problems once there are bumps along the road to personal financial independence and wealth. Good times don’t last forever, people must live within their own limits, and recession is as much a part of economics as is prosperity.

For financial institutions in the UAE, the pool of consumers all too willing to take out another credit card or another loan provided a pool for profits. But when the good times ended, banks were hit with expatriates who fled owing a fortune, or who ended up behind bars with bounced cheques and empty accounts.

The creation of a credit bureau where consumers’ information is shared independently is an essential step in ensuring the financial services market and lenders are dealing with borrowers who can genuinely afford to borrow more, rather than simply answering a marketer’s question that no, they don’t have other obligations.

Al Etihad Credit Bureau is scheduled to be up and running by 2015. Already officials say that once borrowers’ information is opened up for all financial institutions to check, there will be an immediate and freezing effect on lenders: We all owe too much to too many. There needs to be no delay in setting this up. If the agency had existed before — where information was reviewed in a transparent and neutral manner — there would be fewer expatriates to flee, fewer behind bars, and more maturity in the marketplace all around.