Credit bureaus like CIBIL™, Equifax, Experian and CRIF High Mark are the key agencies in India responsible for collecting individual data and generating credit reports and credit scores. The repayment data pertaining to individual loans or credit cards is provided to credit bureaus by the lenders and credit card providers, either monthly or quarterly.
Though this entire credit score generating process is agile and transparent, still the credit bureau credit report could contain errors. Such errors could entail a low credit score impacting your chances of loan approvals or additional credit cards in India.
Mistakes on your credit report could be due to various factors like inaccurate personal information, misprint, duplication of entries etc. It is, therefore, very important that you verify the credit reports once you have received them and immediately apply for the correction of mistakes on your credit report. This would ensure that your credit score is intact, improving your chances of securing loans or credit cards at the best possible rates.
How can I find mistakes on my credit report?
Finding a mistake on a credit report may feel like an arduous task but it is actually not that difficult. Your credit report has information relevant to your personal, contact details, debt accounts, and enquiry details. The mistakes on your credit report could have been made either at the time of data submission or during the aggregation phase.
One needs to understand the type of errors that could occur in a credit report influencing the report accuracy and hampering your credit score in the process. Understanding the errors would help us to raise the mistakes in the credit report with the concerned authority at the earliest.
CIBIL™, Equifax and other key credit bureaus have provisions available through which you can apply for rectification of mistakes in your credit report.
Steps for Rectification of Mistakes in Credit Report
- First, you would need to fill an online form with the credit bureau with details of the mistake.
- The credit bureau would verify the same and then check the same with the respective bank or credit provider.
- Common mistakes from lenders get rectified immediately.
- Mistakes due to fraud need elaborate procedures to be followed by the bank.
- If financial institutions fail to act on your complaint, then the Banking Ombudsman can be approached.
- 30 days is the time period to get your complaints resolved with banks working towards a resolution within 45 days of the complaint being first raised?
- Resolved status is intimated via email.
After your mistakes are said to be rectified, check the same in the revised credit report received. At CreditMantri, the online loan credit comparison platform, you can now get your latest credit score for free generated within minutes.
Now that we’ve seen the steps to resolve the mistakes on your credit report, let’s check out the common mistakes.
Common Mistakes on your Credit Report
The most common errors in the credit report relate to
Latest Balance not getting reflected in Credit Report
Your credit report may not reflect the latest payments made on your loan instalment or credit card dues. This would lead to a wrong balance reflecting in your credit report. Normally lenders and credit card providers are the main sourcing authorities who provide your credit information to the credit bureaus. Such credit reports are normally produced every month but the customers receive the credit report, after 45 days of application for such report. This time lag could result in your latest payments not being reflected in the credit report received, creating a mismatch.
Inaccurate Credit Limit
At times, you would have got an upgrade on your credit card limit from your credit card provider. However, the credit card provider may have not informed the concerned credit bureau of the increased credit limit on your card. This implies that your old credit limit is only getting reflected in your credit report showing a higher high credit utilisation ratio. Such inaccurate information would ultimately impact your credit score.
Incorrect Personal Particulars
Errors could also occur in the credit report on account of incorrect personal details like name, address, date of birth or PAN number. If it is not done, it may so happen that your particulars could have got mixed up with some other person or even erroneous particulars could heavily impact your credit score. It is therefore imperative that customers verify their personal details at length ensuring their correctness always.
Ownership
Customers should also verify the accuracy of their credit history reflecting in the credit report generated by the credit bureaus. They should ensure factual accuracy at all times. All financial details should only pertain to transactions undertaken or owned by them. Otherwise, a wrong credit score could be generated impacting their chances of getting loans or credit card approved.
Duplicate accounts
Any multiple accounts registered with credit bureaus, in the names of customers should also be carefully verified. Having duplicate accounts could even lead to fraudulent transactions which could again impact your credit scores in a negative manner. You should also be aware of any of your family members using your credit card as any payment delay on that part could also lead to lowering your credit scores.
The above list of mistakes is not exhaustive. One should therefore carefully check their credit report for any types of mistakes.
