Tag: Credit Score

Why your credit report remarks matter more than high credit score?

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

So, you have been reading a lot about CIBIL these days and you have got the impression that having a high credit score like 800 or 850 is a key to get your kind of loan?

If that’s the case, let me break your myth that having a high credit score is not a guarantee that you will get a loan from a company. Look at the following comment and you will understand what I am talking about

Dear Sir,

I have taken the PL of Rs.1.5 L from HDFC and get settled of amount Rs.15 k in 2013. In March 2015, I checked my CBIL score, it is 813 however loan status is settled.

Recently I applied for PL of Rs.5 L in ICICI but it gets rejected based on previous settled loan. I don’t get this, when my CBIL score is 813 then how its get rejected. Kindly guide me how could I get PL as its v.urgent for me.

Regards

What is CIBIL remark and score?

In case you are new to this CIBIL concept. I suggest you read this article or watch this video below from the Cibil team.

It will help you understand the concept of the credit bureau and credit report. Once you view the video, then you can move ahead.

Your credit report remarks matter more than your Credit Score

Let me share with you a personal experience. My brother had taken a bike on loan a few years back and I was with him in the Bajaj showroom where I asked the executive if they really looked at CIBIL score (CIBIL was new around that time). The executive shared with me that they don’t look at a credit score, instead, they look at the remarks on the report and that is what matters most along with your other factors.

It was really a new thing for me to know that a credit report does not have that much Importance compared to the credit score in your loan approval process.

Credit remarks vs. Credit Score

Let’s understand both the concepts and the meaning of these two things

What are Credit Remarks on your report?

If you have 3 different kinds of loan accounts (1 home loan, 1 car loan, 1 credit card). In that case, you will have the remarks for each of these loan accounts and the current status. Imagining you have closed the loan accounts, the remarks may say “Settled” , “Written Off” or “Closed”, out of which the first two are bad remarks. At times, if you are not able to pay off the loan, the loan guys will try to persuade you to settle the loan with a lesser amount and close the chapter.

However note that it’s a short term solution to just get away with the problem. Eventually, the remark will be marked as “Settled” or “Written Off” and in future when another lender looks at your report, he will come to know that you didn’t pay the full/partial amount of loan outstanding.

written-off-status-cibil

At this point in time, even if you have great salary or a good credit score (we will look at it below), they are going to reject your loan application.

What is a Credit Score?

Credit score is a number between 300 and 900, which signifies your credit worthiness and how likely are you to default on paying your loan installments. A low credit score means that there are higher chances of you defaulting on the loan payments. This credit score calculation is a trade secret and no one knows the algorithm of how it’s calculated, but there are various factors that are considered by the credit bureau which its calculation.

So one can still have a high credit score (the chances of paying their future EMI’s regularly), but still their past remarks will have a greater impact on their loan evaluation process. While a score of 750+ is desirable (as per CIBIL around 79% loans were given to those with CIBIL score of more than 750), don’t think that just because your score is higher than 750 means that you will surely get a loan.

cibil score 750

In the same way, if yours is less than 750 (like 600 or 720), but if your credit remarks are clean, you will most probably still get the loan, considering you qualify on other parameters like (salary, other EMI etc)

So while credit score gives a future insight, the credit remarks gives insight into the history.

4 other factors because of which loan application rejection can happen?

  • If you are a guarantor for a loan which is already defaulted. Though you have not taken the loan directly, your application might get rejected if you have become the guarantor of a loan by your friend/relative and they have defaulted.
  • If you are too dependent on credit already (means if you are over-leveraged). Imagine if you are already paying 50% of your income on EMI’s and have many different kinds of loans running. Even then your application might be rejected.
  • You don’t have enough tax payment history. If you have not been paying your taxes regularly, then it’s tough for the company to ascertain your paying capacity, hence, make sure you file your returns regularly and properly
  • Too many unsecured loans, if your loan portfolio has too many unsecured loans (credit card, personal loans) then it’s not a good sign and makes you look a credit hungry customer. This might lead to rejection.

So what’s the learning?

So what’s the learning out of this?

The main thing you should focus on is to make sure that your credit report does not contain any bad remarks and if there are any, then you should take actions to rectify it. It will by default help you in improving your credit score. Don’t get obsessed with increasing the credit score. If your credit score is above 700 and your report is clean, you are 95% good to go. Beyond that, if your score is higher, it’s a great thing. But don’t over-focus on it.

Before applying for any kind of loan, make sure you apply for your credit report and score before few months and analyze it to find out if you need to fix it or not. Over the long run, just keep paying your dues on time and do not abuse your credit utilization and you should be good in the long run.

Let me know if you have any queries about this.

Do not close your Loans – If you want to improve your credit score!

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Do you have a loan and want to close it as soon as possible? I know the answer is YES! . Everybody wants to get rid of debt and want to enjoy a debt free life. But, what if I give you a good enough reason to not close your loan and keep paying your EMI on time? And if I suggest you do that even if you have a lot of spare cash which you can use for paying of the loan. Lets see …

Improve your Credit Score - Do not close Loan

There are many people who are paying their previous loans, but when they apply for some new loan, its getting rejected because they have some bad credit record in past either due to settlement of some debt or because they have a bad payment record. This creates a very frustrating atmosphere, where you want to do something which you instantly make you a “good” customer. A big myth people have is that just because they have a loan going on, they are having a bad credit score, and because of this myth, they want to close off their existing loan.

However this is not true! Let’s see an incident which happened with Nagarajan

I was holding two home loans since 2000. I am a well paid professional drawing good salary, however due to frequent transfers my Post dated cheques were not replenished resulting in non-payment for over 6 months, Also due to some signature error a few times, cheque bounces happened, but they were repaid and corrected .

I dont posses any credit card. only debit cards were used regularly for any financial transactions. 6 months back a personal loan enquiry got rejected due to very bad credit score ( 450 only). so immediately I wound up all the loans ( 4 months ago). now I am loan free and no credit card holder. how long will it take to recover my credit scores ?

You would see how Nagarajan closed his loan thinking that his loan eligibility would increase because his credit score will improve. However what he did was totally wrong and the right thing was to just continue paying his existing loan. Lets see why.

Paying EMI regularly is a Opportunity to show your repayment capability

If you look a little deeper, you’d realize that your existing EMI payment is one of the only ways you can showcase your repayment capability. When you make EMI payment on time, this information is updated to credit bureau (CIBIL etc) by your existing lender and if done on a regular basis, it affects your credit score in positive way and also improves your credit report . Your Days Past Due (DPD) section in CIBIL report also gets positive because your recent information for last 36 months is there in the credit report.

So now I hope you are clear about the importance of paying your EMI on time on regular basis. Its one of the only ways you can build your repayment record and improve your credit score. Do you have a credit card or some kind of loan? If yes, then it might make sense to keep paying their dues on time just for making sure that you build your repayment history!

Can you share some thing related to this from your financial life ?

CIBIL marketplace – Get Customised loan offers based your credit score

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

CIBIL has introduced a new facility called “Cibil Marketplace“, which will act like a portal where a person can get customized loan and credit card offers based on his cibil score. Right now, what happens is – when a person applies for some kind of loan or a credit card, the lending institution checks his credit report and credit score and based on their internal criteria and rules, reject or accept the application and move to the next step .

cibil marketplace enter data

How does CIBIL marketplace work?

With CIBIL marketplace, the whole process is reversed. Here, you can find out which lending institutions are ready to give you different kind of loans, interest rates and other conditions based on your credit score. So a lot of lenders will participate in the cibil marketplace and will give their criteria and checklist, like what kind of customer they would like to offer loans. For example – A lender can say that they are ready to give Car loan @13% interest rate to a person having cibil score between 700-800 and @12% if cibil score is more than 800 . Thats one example .

Another lender can say that he is ready to give home loan to people who have credit score below 700 score, but on a condition that he should be working in a software job, however the interest rate would be as high as 15% – this is just an example of how it might look like. So this is how all the lenders will give their own criteria and when you enter the market place, after the filtering you will be shown only those lenders and loan offers which are exactly for your profile. So if you want to increase the number of loan offers, you need to improve your cibil score for that.

Right now the CIBIL marketplace is started with only Credit Cards. But very soon, you will see Home loans, Auto Loans, Personal Loans and even Business Loans on the portal. Just wait for some time or the next update from CIBIL on this.

How to Apply for Loan with CIBIL marketplace ?

Step 1 : You need to first visit Cibil Marketplace website. When you go there you need to fill in two information.

Step 2 : You need to enter your Control Number (which is 9 digit number that is mentioned at the top right of the CIBIL report) and your latest Credit Score, which should be maximum 2 months old. That means, if you had applied for a credit score long back (more than 2 months back) , you will not be able to use that data to enter CIBIL marketplace. You will first have to apply for a latest cibil score (You can get your cibil score online) and only then you will be able to enter the marketplace. One reason for this is that, cibil score and report keeps getting changed each month when banks update the customers information with CIBIL. So ideally if you know control number and cibil score of some other person, you can enter the cibil marketplace with that information and see all the data . Therefore make sure you dont share this data with anyone whom you dont rely.

cibil marketplace enter data

Step 3 : The next step is to go inside the marketplace. You can see different kind of loans section and how many lenders are ready to lend you in each section. For example you can see that only 1 lender is interested to lend in this example and that’s “credit card” section . As of now, only credit cards are offered as this is new facility. But in future you can see more lenders in different sections. All you need to do here is click on the kind of loan you want.

cibil marketplace enter data

Step 4 : After you choose the section, you can see the list of all the lenders individually with some information like Tentative Credit Limit offer, interest rate, fees, charges and other information. You can click on “Apply” button and instantly a small box will appear where you can apply for the loan there itself. Now this will be a kind of pre-approved loan because this is customized to your cibil score, but the next step will be the documentation check, which is part of the check in general . For those who would like to learn more about CIBIL and Credit Score etc, there is a detailed 40 min video course on our Wealth Club.

cibil marketplace enter data

So these are the 4 steps you need to do to take the benefit of CIBIL marketplace.

Few Important Points related to Cibil MarketPlace

  • You can choose only one offer in each category
  • While purchasing your CIBIL TransUnion Score (and CIR), please make sure you fill up your income details accurately. As this will ensure the offers that are displayed in your Market Place are the ones you are eligible for. Any incorrect income detail will mean incorrect offer eligibility and can be rejected by the lender at the time of verification.
  • It also depends how many lenders choose to participate in CIBIL marketplace. There might be lenders who choose not to.
  • Once you have selected an offer then the respective lender will get in touch with you. Please ensure the details entered by you in the CIBIL TransUnion Score (including CIR) purchase form is accurate. This will enable the lender to respond to you at the earliest. You can also provide alternate contact details while selecting and confirming the offer in the CIBIL Market Place.

Who will benefit with Cibil Marketplace ?

CIBIL marketplace is an innovative platform and will also be helpful to those people who have low cibil score and a bad credit report , but still want to go for some kind of loan, even if it means on certain terms and conditions. It may be the case that they might pay a little more interest, but that would be better than not getting loan at all. This platform might also be the first step in providing incentive to those customers who have excellent cibil score. They might get loads of loan offers from lenders with lower interest rates compared to normal customer. Only the time will tell how this platform will evolve.

Let us know what do think about CIBIL marketplace and is it useful for you ?

8 tips to Improve CIBIL Score !

Posted on by Jagoinvestor

Is your CIBIL report and Score messed up ? Then the biggest question you must be having is “How to Improve CIBIL Score ?”. “Bad credit score” is really a scary phrase these days. Many people are stuck with a bad credit score/report due to their own or credit card company mistakes, but most of the times I see that it happens due to poor credit behaviour and mis-management of credit officers. Everyone wants to improve cibil score, so that they do not face any issue in getting loans at some point in future. Now in this article, I will highlight few tips/points which will help you understand what makes a great credit report and good credit score. To understand this, just be clear that your credit score is dependent on several things and taking care of each point is very important. Read in detail about CIBIL Score here

1. Late payment / missed payments

The biggest reason for a bad credit score is bad loan repayment history. A lot of people pay their bills late or miss the payment completely. It’s so tempting to pay the minimum balance now and pay the balancing due later. Doing this just saves you from late payment fees, that’s all. The interest is charged and more than that you should be worried because this information is updated by your bank to CIBIL and the next thing is obvious, your credit report and score gets uglier each month because of this. So every time you miss your home loan EMI, car loan EMI, credit card payment or you make a late payment, it affects your score badly. If you have done a lot of late payments or missed payments earlier, its your time to fix it by being more disciplined from now on. Dont worry, if you now promise to pay things on time and do it regularly for next 1-2 yrs, it will surely improve cibil score for you.

Common sense Tip: Don’t pay your bills through cheque just 1 day before the last due date, because it does not mean that your payment is done. Some one will collect it, send it somewhere, then some one will make an entry for it etc, etc… This can take some time and result in delayed payment. Why not drop it 5 days earlier instead of 1 day? Please automate the payments for EMI’s and your bills. If the bills are not fixed each month, at least put a recurring reminder in your phone 5 days before the last date and then make the payment. If I can do this, why can’t you? In last 4 yrs, I have made my FULL credit card payment 48 times exactly 4-10 days earlier than the last date of payment. My CIBIL score is 831. You can also check your CIBIL score online

2. Large Number of credit cards and loans

There was a time when having 6-8 credit cards was a commonly practiced trend and something to show off, now you will pay for it! A lot of credit cards and loans above a “natural” limit is a big negative thing. That shows credit hunger and an extreme dependence on credit in your life. It shows that your life is too much dependent on external credit. Lets say you have two friends Ajay and Robert. Ajay asks for some credit from 2 people in whole year and then asks you for another Rs X and you have good friendship with him, I am sure you will think once and then may be give the money to him. But on the other hand imagine Robert who has taken a credit from 8 people in your office and 2 other people outside office, then when he comes to you and asks for even Rs X/2 amount, you will think 5-10 times before giving it to him. What kind of feelings you will be having in mind? What all doubts will be there in your mind? Some thing same happens in the loan industry, if you have more than “required” or acceptable limit of credits, it badly affects your score. Your score reduces point by point each month.

Common sense tip: If you have a lot of credit cards, better increase the limit of 2-3 of them and close the other credit cards. This way you will have same Credit limit in total and have reduced number of cards. Its better to have 2 cards with 25,000 limit each, than 5 credit cards with 10,000 limit each.

3. Utilizing your full Credit Limit each month

One of the easiest way to improve cibil score is to effectively use your credit card and do not utilize it fully to the limit. If your credit card limit is Rs 50,000 a month and every month you use 40,000 or 45,000, it will affect your score in bad way. Even if you are paying your dues on time, still what it shows is that you are utilizing your limit to fullest, companies don’t know that you might be doing it deliberately to “manage” your credit effectively, but the way it is seen is that your life is dependent on credit. So stop reaching 80% or 90% of your credit limit. A 30%-40% credit utilization is well accepted and seen as “positive” and make sure its the case with all the credit cards you have.

If you have 2 credit cards with limit of Rs 10,000 in first card and Rs 10,000 in second card and you spend Rs 9,000 from first credit card, but Rs 0 from second credit card, then your 1 st credit card utilization is 90% & 0% in second. Which means that you are seen negatively on your first credit card and “positively” on second card, but what you can do is spend 5,000 from first card and Rs 4,000 from second card, so that your credit utilization is 50% and 40% on both the cards and its “positive” on both.

Common sense tip: If you are reaching your limit, either make sure you move to cash/debit card for a part of your expenses and reduce your credit card limit, but in case you can not reduce your expenses on credit card, better call your credit card customer care or write to them that you want your limit to be increased. Most of the companies will do it. Just tell that you have few things lined up in next 2-3 months and you want the limit to be increased.

On the other hand think well before closing a credit card that you are not using. Your over all credit limit will come down if you close a credit card. So make sure you think twice before closing a credit card from credit utilization ratio point of view.

4. Higher percentage of Unsecured credit

A high number/amount of unsecured credit is bad. Unsecured credit here means credit card debt and personal loan debt, which are totally unsecured and you can run away with it. If you have total 1,00,000 worth of debt and out of that 80,000 is because of credit card and personal loan, then 80% of your debt is Unsecured. This is bad. If you had 80% of Secured debt like education/home/auto loan, then it was a different thing. I believe this is very obvious, the more unsecured debt you have, the bad it looks like. It shows that your life has more “emergencies” than a normal person, which makes you hungry for immediate credit. So this makes sure your credit score takes a hit. Remember that having a good mix of credit types is a good idea. So if you have home loan, education loan and credit card, that’s 3 types of loans, which is good. But if you have 5 personal loans and that’s all, it shows too much dependence on one kind of loan.

Common sense tip: Make sure your total unsecured debt, looks small in front of your total debt. You if have 80,000 of unsecured debt out of total debt of 1,00,000, then your unsecured debt ratio is 80%. If you take 5 lacs of secured loan, then your unsecured debt comes down in percentage, that makes things look better. Or make sure you prepay a part of your unsecured debt and bring down the percentage, Its one of the ways to improve cibil score !

5. Being a guarantor without giving a thought

If I take a home loan and ask you to be a guarantor for my home loan because I have helped you with so many things in personal finance, because I have answered so many of your comments and helped in solving your queries, what would you say? Don’t think more on this, you better say “Go to hell”. Because if I default on that home loan, you are held liable and your score will go down. While my score will be affected more, yours will also take a good hit! A lot of people because of various reasons become guarantor for other’s loan and then the primary person runs away or is unable to pay off the loan. Don’t do it, unless you are really sure you want to do it. I can do it for my brother, but not for you.

Common sense tip: Don’t leave your documents here and there, if you don’t agree to become a guarantor, many people try to make you guarantor by forging documents and misusing xerox PAN card or driving licence. Signature is easy to copy these days! Also when your friend who has spent good time with you in last 3 months, asks you to become a guarantor, tell him you were thinking of asking him to be guarantor for your home loan, good way to test the friendship!

6. Duration of your credit history – more is better

Longer the history, better it is. You will trust a 5 yrs old friend more than 3 months old one. That’s true in case of credit history too. If you are paying your payments/EMI’s for all loans on time from last 5 yrs, it’s very much a proof that you pay on time, you have a good history, but if I have a good history from last 5 months, that is not that strong. So higher the duration of good payment history, the better your score will be and will help you to increase cibil score.

Common sense tip: If you do not have a credit card, there is a good reason why you should get one now and do your payments with credit card and pay in full every month, so that your payment history is built.

7. Too many inquiries in short spam of time

Making too many inquiries in a very short time is not looked at positively. Imagine you have made a credit card inquiry, a personal loan inquiry, a car loan inquiry in last 3 months itself. What does it show? It shows credit hunger, it shows that you want to snatch any credit which you can get, you want to get things in life on credit. Hence have a respectable amount of gap between each inquiry you do. Dont apply for home loan with 6 banks. Note that each and every inquiry you do is reported in your credit report and if your report is full of inquiries, your score will stink! Any lender will doubt your payment capacity when you are so much dependent on credit. So the best way to improve cibil score is to keep your enquiries minimum.

Common sense tip: A lot of people just apply for loans even if they really don’t need it, keep this thing in mind and deliberately make sure that there is few months of gap between 2 loan applications (at least 6 months gap would really be good).

8. Settlement of your Loan Or running away

This is the worst mistakes of all. There are people who first take on a lot many loans and then are unable to pay it. So they either ran away (companies mark it as “write-off”) or at best just made some payment and settled the loan (companies mark it as “settled”). And this will make sure you are blacklisted for at least 7 yrs. You will not be given any loan, you can cry your eyes out for that 1 small credit card and you will be treated like you are nothing.

Common sense tip: Cut your debt, when it shows a sign of going out of control. One common ground rule which can be followed it that the overall outstanding credit at any point of time should not be more than 1 month of your take home salary. There is no solution of an out of control credit card debt other than paying it in FULL. Live a life with credit card as if you don’t have one!

Each tip on How to Improve CIBIL Score has its own weightage

Note that different factors which affect your credit score has its own weightage, so one factor can be more stronger than the other, but make sure you follow all the best practices and do not make any wrong decision. Look at your actions from the lender point of you. See what kind of people you would like to give credit if you were the loan provider. Just act like what you had expected

Did you understand how you can improve cibil score ? Can you share some top to increase your credit score , incase its not covered in this article !