Whether you’re applying for a credit card or loan such as a home loan, car loan, or personal loan, your credit score is one of the few important factors that lenders check to assess your creditworthiness. A lender evaluates your loan repayment ability based on your credit report.
Paying your dues on time has a positive impact on your credit score. But if you do not make payment on time, defaults will be mentioned in the DPD section of the credit report. Your CIBIL score will start falling and lenders will refrain from approving your loan or credit card application. If you’re wondering whether your low credit score has put you in the ‘CIBIL Defaulters List’ then you must know that CIBIL does not maintain a defaulters list. In fact, there is no defaulters list that is maintained by either CIBIL or any other credit bureau.
If you want to save yourself from being labelled as a ‘Defaulter’, you need to improve your credit score. To help you with the same, the following are some of the important points to remember:
1. Check Your Credit Report
Make sure you check your credit report for any errors regularly to stay updated with your credit score. If there’s a fall, you can track down the reasons and rebuild your credit score in time. If you find an error in the report, you may contact CIBIL through their website contact details.
Also Read: How to raise the dispute for the error in your CIBIL report?
2. Clear Off Your Dues
Delayed loan repayment is one of the major reasons behind poor credit scores. A ‘settled’ or ‘written off’ status on a credit report warns lenders as it shows that the borrower cannot be trusted to fulfil their debt obligations. Therefore, loans for CIBIL defaulters are mostly rejected by lenders. To improve your credit report, clear off all outstanding dues as soon as possible. Once all your outstanding bills are cleared, check your credit report after three months or so to ensure the new status reflects in your credit report.
3. Pay Your Bills in Time
When you take a loan, you are required to repay a certain amount to the lender each month. Don’t be in an illusion that a single skip, delay, or partial payment will not affect your credit score as every single transaction of your payment is recorded and reported to the credit bureau. Missing or delaying even a single loan instalment negatively impacts your credit history and credit score.
If you want to improve your credit score or keep the good score steady, start paying your monthly loan payments and credit card bills before the due date. The timely you pay your instalments; the higher will be your credit score.
4. Spend as Per Your Credit Limit
When repairing your credit score, pay down all credit accounts where you have balance more than 25% of its credit limit. CIBIL defaulters who use credit cards often to make payments, keep a check on the amount you spend using it. Ensure that you do not spend more than 50% of your credit limit as it shows lack of discipline and raises a suspicion on your financial ability to pay off your bills, hence, negatively impacting your credit score. Therefore, you must refrain from spending too much using your credit card.
5. Take Loans One at a Time
Never apply for multiple loans at the same time as it shows that you are credit hungry. In addition, you should not apply for loans even in short duration as even this behaviour raises a suspicion on your creditworthiness. Therefore, you should apply for a loan one at a time. This not only increases your chances of getting your loan approved, but also makes the payments easy to manage.
Also Know: 5 Tips to Get Your Personal Loan Application Approved