Do you know how to get your CIBIL credit report online in India ? Do you know what your credit score is and whether the next loan you request for will be rejected or approved?
How to get a CIBIL report (Credit Information Bureau India Limited) is a fairly easy question to answer as we will show you today. But before that, what is the importance of a Credit Information Report (CIR) and why is it needed?
Your CIBIL credit report in India
Your credit report is a way of telling whether you are capable to take on a loan to fund something which you intend to buy. It uses information on your past credit behaviour to spit out a credit score (called the CIBIL TransUnion Score). The credit score itself ranges from 300 to 900 and yes, you are right in assuming that you are better off if you are near to 900. That gives the lender more reasons to give the loan to you as they know that you will repay.
This credit score tells your lender to what probability you will default. Your past credit usage and loan repayments paint a true picture of where you stand with respect to your capability to pay off the loan. If it’s not good (on the lower side 300), the lender can reject giving you a loan and that means you cannot buy whatever you set out to buy.
Credit scores in India were more understood after the 2008 economic downturn when many loan applications got rejected.
Let us jump onto to see how we can get a credit report. It might be worth mentioning that an offline mechanism is also available wherein CIBIL will send you your credit report in around 2-3 weeks. The online mechanism is much faster.
Steps
Step 1. Go to http://www.cibil.com/credit-score.
You will see a “Buy Now” button. Click no that.
Step 2. Next, a Request Form will get shown to you. You can see that the form contains details about you – personal information, phone details, address proof etc etc. Please be aware that self attested documents need to be attached. So you will need to scan these and keep them ready before you hop over to get your credit score.
Needless to say, you will also need to provide your credit card details and loan account numbers to help CIBIL credit report to pull up your data.
Step 3. At the bottom of this form, you will see “Click here for online payment”. This is where you cough up the dough of Rs 450/-. The payment can be done via credit cards or net banking.
Step 4. After you successfully complete the above step, you will receive a unique CIBIL registration ID and transaction ID – this is a confirmation of the fact that you have paid online for your credit report.
Step 5. This involves authentication. You will need to answer 5 questions about your loans and credit cards to authenticate your application. Obviously, this means that you need to keep all your personal details and all previous and current loan/credit card details ready. It is recommended that you keep these handy with you before you go with this step.
Step 6. If the authentication is successful, you will immediately receive your online credit report and credit score at the email id you gave.
Step 7. If the authentication fails, then you have by default gone to the offline method of getting your credit report. You now need to print out the online payment confirmation, and send it across to CIBIL. Note that you need to attach the identity and address proofs when doing so. Once CIBIL receives your request, it will ship across your credit report to you.
The following documents are required for CIBIL Credit Report, along with the online payment confirmation in cases of unsuccessful authentications:
1. Online Payment Confirmation
2. Identity Proof – PAN / Passport / Voter’s id (Identity proof should be valid and not expired)
3. Address Proof – Bank Statement / Electricity Bill / Telephone Bill / Passport / Credit Card Statement (Address proof should be not more than 3 months from the date of application and should be in your name)
Send all these to the below address:
Consumer Relations – Disclosure Request,
Credit Information Bureau (India) Limited, Hoechst House, 6th Floor, 193,
Backbay Reclamation, Nariman Point, Mumbai 400 021.
Note:
The above report will fetch you both the Credit Information Report (CIR) and the credit score. The cost of the same is Rs 450/-. Should you desire to have only the CIR, it can be got for Rs 142/-, however, the CIR will come to you via courier and is not sent online.
Radhey,
Very informative post. How authentic are these reports? I have heard that there are other private players too offering credit reports. Do you a sample report to see how it looks.
Rakesh
@Rakesh, I am not sure of how the credit score part looks as I dont have any credit history. As far as CIR goes it looks as below with entries about enquiries made by banks against you.
maybe others will be able to tell about score.
Instituttion amount date purpose
HDFC 1000 10/1/2012 credit card
@Venkat, apart from enquiries, the CIL will provide a complete history of all the loans and credit cards under your name. Details include vendor name, opened date, santioned amount/high credit (high credit is highest billing you have had on the credit card), last payment date, current balance, closed date if applicable and overdue amount.
@Abhilash, Exactly. Thanks for this information Abhilash. Appreciated.
@Venkat, I will try and upload a sample credit report – maybe that will help.
@Radhey,
Were you able to get a sample credit report?
Rakesh
@Rakesh, I have mine :-), did you google and check…If you cannot find it, I can dig further…
@Venkat, If you are having credit cards and paying its debt regularly, don’t you have a credit score based on that?
I think, your credit score will be affected if you miss any payments.
@Rakesh, I have not heard about the private players, I do not think that is the case. I have a sample of the report which I shall upload here soon.
Yes there are private players too. Manish@Jagoinvestor had done a post sometime back. Here is the link.
http://www.jagoinvestor.com/2012/01/equifax-credit-report.html
Rakesh
@Rakesh, I think CIBIL is also a private player. Don’t you think so?
@Manickkam,
Is CIBIL a private player? i thought it was formed by RBI and other banks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIBIL
Radhey,
Yes, there are private players in India providing the credit report.
Equifax and Experian are the two companies which provide credit history. Though i have no idea how their report and the one generated by CIBIL are?
Rakesh
@Rakesh, It’s got to be the same, cannot be different.
@Rakesh, When there are more companies providing credit history, for a big ticket loan, all the credit histories will be looked into by the banks before providing the loan.
So, we should also make sure to have a clean history in all of them.
@Manicckam,
Yes, I agree. HDFC Bank was quick to provide me a home loan. Maybe i am customer since 90’s that worked in my favor.
Rakesh
@Abhilash, yes you are right..since i do not have any credit history even credit card too until last week so i have no idea of how the other data is displayed.
That’s great. But does it really play a vital role in sanctioning/decling a loan proposal?
@Sudip D, Of course ! Ask the chaps when you take a home loan and you will know.
It is very very vital now.
@Radhey Sharma, Hmm.. Ok. Then need to pay attention on this aspect.
Thank you for boosting our outlook. 🙂
@Sudip D, Some years back, I had applied for a 45K consumer durables loan and the finance company got my Credit history from cibil. They then called me to check why I had missed one EMI on my home loan which was 4 years old. I explained why that situation happened. They called me again to ask for further clarification and I decided I had had enough. I asked them to forget about the application. In hindsight, I feel lucky to have gone through that situation because I understood the importance of having a clean credit history.
@Abhilash, So did you not chase them to clear this position, what if this comes back to haunt you in the future ?
It’s very painful and time consuming, but it’s necessary.
@Radhey Sharma, I missed the EMI I as the bank produced two cheques (One for the Last Pre-EMI amount and another one for the first Full EMI) in the same month and I did not have enough balance in my account. Unfortunately, the bank had forgotten to inform me beforehand! All the bank did was apologize for this. I produced the email communications as proof to the financing company but that was not enough for them or they just did not care to listen.
@Abhilash, I woudl check my report to see whether that contributed to a negative score and if yes, correct it.
@Abhilash, Hey thanks for sharing your personal experience in this regard.
Maintaing an excellent reputation concerning one’s credit score is quite a big deal. Huh!
Had a query?
What sorts of parameters are involved in credit rating. For eg. ABC banks offers me a credit card with no fees for 1 year. In the second year I get a statement with annual charges of Rs. 4k. I call the bank and tell them that i don’t need the card and cancel it. Will this too reflect in my credit rating?
Rakesh
@Rakesh, Good question. This possibly could reflect in the report. It is the onus of the person (you) to clear that out by gong to the bank and telling them to clean their records and update CIBIL about it.
Thats is why it is important to check the report to clear out such discrepancies.
@Rakesh,
AFAIK,
All the applications to credit card are reported. when you close something (credit card, bank account) within 6 months, its taken as a negative. Not all the applications to Loan is considered if applied at the same time.
And, of course, all the transactions on credit card and loan account are considered.
Radhey,
Hmmm… Twice i had filled the application form for ICICI bank credit card in the past but never got one. Could this be the reason?
But i do have a home loan with HDFC bank and got their credit card without any hassles two years back.
Rakesh
@Rakesh, If you have got 1 credit card, then this cannot be the reason why ICICI did not give you one.
And if you have one card, the other is not required !
@Rakesh, Check with the bank. This could well be the reason. But usually, they don’t disclose the exact reason on why the application got rejected.
If you really want the card for some reason, apply after 6 months.
@Manicckaam,
The case which i mentioned was in 2004-05. So its long time. Now i am using credit card from HDFC bank and am satisfied with their service. ICICI bank offered me a lifetime free credit card last year but i did not take it.
Rakesh
@Radhey,
I had one credit card which i cancelled since the bank levied annual charges. After that i applied for ICICI credit card twice but did not hear anything from them. Later when i applied for hdfc, i got one.
Rakesh
The report doesn’t have the balance that you have in the bank. It has the details of the credit card and loans. So, one would have a report only when he have some credit history.
It plays a vital role while applying for the loans and credit cards.
I believe every one should try to get the CIBIL report atleast once in a Year since that will help you in understanding your credit score and the details of your loan/CC details.This will help you in rectifying any mistakes in the report or closing out the outstanding loan/credit card amount in due time rather than finding out that when you apply for a loan and that is rejected. I was able to download my CIBIL report by paying Rs 450 and by answering the 5 verification questions. CIBIL had emailed me my CIBIL report with in 4 days as promised. It is very easy to understand the CIBIL credit report. The first page will have your overall credit score and in the subsequent pages all your loan/credit card details are mentioned. It will show you the total amount outstanding on any loan/credit card account and also how many days have passed since the last due payment. It is very easy to understand the credit report. In my report there were so many issues ( like my Banks have not updated the payment status to CIBIL) and I was able to approach the bank and get their confirmation in an email that they will be updating the CIBIL about my latest payment status. I have decided to review my CIBIL report every 6 months/year to avoid any surprises in my report.
@Shanil, Vow, amazing firs thand experience. Keep your thoughts and experiences coming Shanil, this really helps.
@Shanil, I hope only when you are in need of a loan, one would really worry about his CIBIL credit score. Otherwise, there is no real need for knowing it other than having credit card.
Having a better credit score as a individual helps you in getting a better deal in the loan front. Why should one get it every 6 months/year?
Do you see every bank missing something now and then in updating to CIBIL?
Really nice to know your credit score before hand to get a better deal with the bank and it would be better if you get it about a year back when you are planning to get a loan to avoid surprises.
@Manickkam, Banks might miss updating CIBIL. So it makes sense to check every now and then.
I also know that cheque bounces, inability to pay utility bills and all find their way into your credit report.
So it does make sense to see the overall picture of what it looks like.
@Radhey Sharma, Right Radhey. I would be concerned about CIBIL credit score only while applying loans. So, I should be checking the CIBIL score only about a year ago for that and correct it immediately and try to get a good score, thereby get a good deal with the bank.
If I am able to get a good deal with the bank on some loan even without noticing this, I don’t have to care about this. Is there any other real reason for having a good credit score other than while applying for a loan?
@Radhey, @Manickkam,
So i assume that credit report is a must only when we are applying for loans. What if you already got a loan and won’t take one in future. Should one still go for the report?
Rakesh
@Rakesh, Basically the report is used to show your credit history and the probability of your defaulting on a future loan. So it is correct to assume that the driving factor is a loan.
Don’t bother if you don’t want a loan.
@Radhey,
Thanks for the clarification.
Even if i go in for a loan 5 years down the line, i have never defaulted any EMI’s till date with my current loan so that would put me in good books.
Rakesh
@Shanil,
Thanks for the detailed explanation.
Rakesh
Thanks Radhey. This is a very good article sharing the complete process of getting your credit report.
What happened to the sample report you mentioned that you will upload? It will be good to see how it looks like.
Also, would it be possible for you to explain how positive and negative scoring is done? e.g. if i have paid last 6 months credit card bill on time, how many point would it add? And then i missed one payment, how many point would it deduct?
@Vivek K, Vivek, I can try but I do not know when I will be able to get this out. I have a list of articles I want to write on which readers requested for.
I will put your request in that list. I am still hunting for the sample report. Should upload by this weekend.
@Radhey,
Could get a hold on a sample report?
@Radhey,
Sorry, could you get a hold on a sample report?
Guess, i am typing in my sleep. Time to go to bed.
@Radhey,
Sample report –
http://www.scribd.com/doc/54933587/Welcome-to-CIBIL
Maybe you can download and attach it to the topic.
I uploaded it to the article as well, thanks Rakesh for sending it across.
@Radhey,
Your welcome, hopefully it will benefit all our readers.
@Rakesh, This is great. Thanks Rakesh & Radhey.
@Radhey Sharma, But I am still keen to know how’s the score calculated?
Try a new pan card make some changes here and there with name and address and initials
and create a new credit rating
i will try this and will let you know the result
thanks for sharing
@wild cat, isn’t that illegal?
same problem happened with me atleast a year ago… but now i am able to get loan with many company…infact banks are eager to give me a loan due to my good credit score with cibil…
this all happened with the help of credit sudhaar team…
they solved my all problem and give me a new life…
you can too touch with them via http://www.creditsudhaar.com or 67886788
Nice post.
Thanx Rosepriya…