Checking your CIBIL score on your own is considered a soft enquiry. It is not mentioned in your credit report and thus has no impact on your score. When a lender fetches your CIBIL report to assess your credit application, your CIBIL score may witness a temporary downfall.

Your CIBIL score is refreshed every 15 days. At Paisabazaar, you can check your latest credit score once every month.

The best option to get a credit card without a CIBIL score is by applying for a secured credit card. This card is issued against a fixed deposit, and the lender does not check your credit score to approve your application.

Your CIBIL score is generated within three months of you starting to use a credit product. If you have availed a credit product recently, you can visit Paisabazaar, enter details and check your credit score for the first time for free. If the score is not generated, you can wait for the next cycle and check again.

Your credit score is the most important factor when determining your creditworthiness for a loan or credit card. A high score can make it easier for you to avail the credit product whereas a low score can cause rejection of your credit application.

A score closer to 900 means that you have handled credit very well in the past and you may be eligible for some of the best loan and credit card offers. It may be very difficult to reach a score of 900 but even if you get close to 900, you are considered as one of the best prospects for a lender.

There can be various reasons that impact your CIBIL score. Any small default can impact your score. To find out the actual reason for the decrease in your score, download the Credit Health Report from Paisabazaar and check all factors that impact your score.

Any score above 750 is considered a good credit score. You may get some loans or credit cards approved at a score of 720 but you will definitely miss out on some of the best loan and credit card offers.

Closing a credit card will lower your overall credit limit and increase your credit utilisation ratio which may somewhat impact your credit score. If you close your oldest active credit card, your age of credit history will also reduce which may impact your credit score as well.

You can provide your Aadhar Card as an ID proof while checking your CIBIL Score. It is not possible to check your credit score using an Aadhar Card only. You need to provide your PAN card to check your credit score from any credit bureau in India as your CIBIL Score is directly linked to your PAN card.

Both Experian and CIBIL use their own proprietary models to calculate the credit score for an applicant. Thus, the applicant may have different credit scores for two different credit bureaus.

Credit mix is a collection of all credit products availed by you. It may contain secured as well as unsecured credit. Having only one type of credit product may impact your score negatively whereas your credit score might get positively impacted if you have handled a variety of credit products in the past.

You can raise a dispute directly with the credit bureau by mentioning the details of the error in the report with required proof, if available. The bureau requests information from the lender and based on the information provided, updates the entry in your credit report.

A CIBIL score of minus 1 indicates that the credit bureau does not have any information regarding an applicant’s credit history. Thus, lenders would not be able to assess the risk of approving your credit application. Due to this, you may miss out on numerous good credit card and loan offers.

Your CIBIL score is confidential personal information that only you or a few authorized entities (on your consent) are allowed to access. These authorized entities can access your credit report only under specific circumstances, for instance, when you apply for a new loan or credit card.
Some authorized entities that can access your CIBIL score/report include financial institutions and banks, who are trusted CIBIL members. No other individual or entity has access to your credit report.

Any financial institution where you have applied for credit, be it a loan or credit card, can request your credit report from a credit bureau, such as CIBIL. When you fill the application form, you consent to let the lender request your credit report from the bureau. Without this consent, no entity or individual can access your credit report.

800 is considered a very good credit score. It will make you a very good prospect for a lender and the lender would reciprocate this creditworthiness in the form of various benefits such as quick approval, lower interest rates, low/no processing fees, etc.

A CIBIL score for 760 is generally considered good enough to be eligible for various loan and credit card offers. It shows that you have handled credit smartly in the past and the risk of approving your credit application for a lender is relatively low. You also become eligible for various pre-approved offers in future.

Your current lenders report your loan/credit card status to CIBIL periodically and these details get reflected in your report over time. Therefore, if you close out a loan or credit card account this month, it might still reflect in your credit report.

Multiple credit enquiries in a short span show the desperation for credit by an applicant. Every hard enquiry has the potential to lower the credit score. Multiple hard enquiries in a short period have a huge potential to lower the credit score significantly. Instead, one should do proper research and compare loans or credit cards by various providers and apply only for the best feasible product.

A lender first looks at your credit score while considering your application for a loan. If your credit score is low, your loan application can get rejected even if you have a high salary or low credit utilization ratio. You should check your credit score free online to see the reason behind a poor score.

All banks and NBFCs are CIBIL members and provide details of loans and credit card repayments to CIBIL monthly. When you request the credit report, CIBIL accesses these details and calculates the score based on the data provided by the members.

The same logic holds true for credit scores prepared by other 3 leading credit bureaus, such as Experian, Equifax and CRIF High Mark.

The basic differences between the CIBIL report and CIBIL Rank are mentioned below:

CIBIL Report:

• CIBIL report is a detailed summary of consumer credit history generated by TransUnion CIBIL.
• It contains historical data of all the loans and credit cards repayments.
• A Credit report consists of data compiled from the applicant’s payment history, length of credit history, credit utilization, amount owed, etc.

CIBIL Rank:

• Credit Rank represents a company's creditworthiness that is denoted by numbers scaled from Rank 1 to 10.
• It holds the historical record of the company’s all loans and business credit card repayments.
• Companies with CIBIL Rank 1 are the most preferred borrowers while those with CIBIL Rank 10 are the least preferred.

Currently, your credit score, whether reported by CIBIL, Experian, Equifax or CRIF High Mark, is one of the key factors that determine your eligibility to get a new credit product. Different banks and NBFCs have different cut-off criteria in providing new credit products.
Maintaining a good credit score (closer to 900) definitely improves your chances of getting approvals on additional credit products. However, CIBIL score (or credit score) is not the only criteria that determine a person’s eligibility to secure new credit. Lenders also take into account other factors like your debt to income ratio, credit and employment history, their own internal criteria, etc. before making lending decisions.

Credit report or credit score is applicable for the individuals, which is provided by the four credit bureaus available in India, namely, CIBIL TransUnion, Experian, Equifax or CRIF High Mark. On the other hand Credit rating is provided by CRISIL, ICRA, etc. and is applicable for companies and organizations.

Even though a few factors might impact your credit approval, some do not impact your credit score. The most common factors among those can be your take-home salary, location of residence, employment history, age, etc.

So, instead of these, you should focus primarily on timely repayments, credit enquiries only when required, regularly checking the credit report for errors, etc.

When you check your credit score on Paisabazaar, you get scores from multiple bureaus. Your CIBIL report is provided on the dashboard where your CIBIL score is published. You can download your CIBIL report here and use DDMMYYYY as password.

Your CIBIL score is calculated from your credit history. So, if you have never taken any credit product like a loan or credit card, CIBIL will assign you a "New to Credit" tag, which means you have no credit history.

It becomes difficult for the lender to determine the risk category you fall into in case you have never taken a loan or never had a credit card.

Applying for a lot of credit products in quick succession represents you as a credit hungry person. So, many banks do not approve your loan or credit card application, even if you have a high credit score and low credit utilization ratio.

Becoming a guarantor for someone else’s loan makes you liable to pay the loan in case he/she fails to do so. The guarantor’s CIBIL score is impacted in case he/she fails to repay a loan where the primary borrower has already defaulted.

Your CIBIL Score includes only credit-related information and does not consider your salary, savings account, investments, rent, insurance or utility bill payments.

Any negative information, such as missed payments, loan default, settlement, etc., remains in your credit report for 7 years. All DPD information for each credit account remains in your CIBIL report and the credit report of other bureaus for 3 years.

If you do not have a CIBIL Score or Credit Score from any other bureau, you will be considered ‘New to Credit’. You can start building credit by getting a credit card and using it responsibly. With disciplined usage and timely payments on your credit card, you can build a good credit score in 3-6 months.