What is Credit Report?

 

A credit report is a summary of your credit history. Your lender – banks and non-banking financial institutions – provide information to the credit bureaus which inturn compiles the information received from multiple lenders into one credit report.

There are three credit bureaus India – Credit information bureau of India limited, Equifax and Experian.

All three of them provide credit reports.

CIBIL credit report

CIBIL stands for Credit information bureau of India Limited. CIBIL credit report is an exhaustive report consisting of your payment history of the past 3 years.  It consists of CIBIL TransUnion Score that is referred by the lenders to check your creditworthiness when you apply for a loan. The CIBIL TransUnion Score ranges between 300 and 900. A score above 750 is considered a good score by the lender and the chances of you getting loan rises.

A CIBIL Report Consists of 5 Sections

1. Personal information – under this section you will find your name, date of birth, gender, PAN card number, passport, driver’s license, Motor ID etc.
2. Contact information – It will have your contact details: telephone, mobile numbers, address (Permanent, current, office) and up to 4 email addresses.
3. Employment information – It contains your occupation and income details as reported by your lender.
4. Account information – This is the most important section of your credit information report. It has the details of the loan and credit cards you have taken. It will have specific information such as the loan date, last payment, and loan outstanding, total loan amount. It will also have a month-on-month history payments made by you for the past 36 months. 
5. Enquiry information – It shows the enquiry made by the lender for your credit application such as name, date of application and its size.

Equifax Credit Report

Equifax credit report is also a compilation of your credit history collected from various lenders. It will also provide your personal as well as credit accounts details such as loans that you have taken and credit cards that you own. The credit report will also provide your credit score.     

There are two types of reports that Equifax provides.

Basic Credit Report

It will have the following details:

• Personal information section will have information related to your name, date of birth/age, address and ID information.
• Credit summary section will give details related to each of your the loan accounts with details such as  outstanding loan amount, total amount of loan taken, period of  loan, any defaults or delay you have made.
• Recent activity section will show the loan applications made by you in the recent past.
•  Account details Section will provide the repayment history for each loan account.
• Inquiries section shows any inquiry made by any lender on you.

Enhanced Credit Information Report

This is a more detailed version of the basic credit report containing graphs and charts for credit limit utilization against available credit limit, credit mix and delinquency trend etc.

For more details Read: what is Equifax credit report?

Experian credit report

The Experian credit report gives your Experian credit score which is a numeric representation of your credit history. It also has Experian Report Number (ERN). It is a unique 15 digit number which is used as reference number to validate your information.  For any communication with Experian you will need this number, so, if you have lost it, you will have to apply for it.

For more detail on Experian credit report read: What is Experian credit report?

Experian Credit Information Company India Private limited, a subsidiary of Experian global information services company started its India operations in December 2006. It collaborated with Axis Bank, Federal Bank, Indian Bank, Magna Finance, Punjab National Bank, Sundaram Finance and Union Bank of India to provide credit information services.