You might get rid of your habits fast but for US returnees, it’ll take a while to get rid of the credit score idea.
For all our lives in the US, we’ve been working hard to grow our credit score and now a move back to India restarted it from zero.
In this article...
Credit Score Monitoring in India
Credit Score is a new concept in India.
Unlike in the US, most people in India aren’t aware of credit scores, yet. Since it’s a new concept, it’s got a long way to go.
But banks and other financial institutions, however, use credit scores in India for customer evaluation.
For example, if you’re applying for a car loan or home loan in India, banks will check your credit score.
If your credit score is low, then your interest rates are likely to go up.
If your credit score is higher, then you are likely to get a better interest rate.
Credit Reporting Agencies in India
There are four major credit monitoring/reporting agencies in India.
The significant one is CIBIL.
Credit Information Bureau (India) Limited (CIBIL), India’s first Credit Information Bureau was established by the Reserve Bank of India to improve the functionality and stability of the Indian financial system by containing non-performing assets (NPAs) while improving credit grantors’ portfolio quality.
Wikipedia
RBI approved three other credit bureaus in 2010 – CRIF High Mark (earlier High Mark), Equifax and Experian.
CIBIL is currently promoted by TransUnion and is most popular or widely used by financial institutions in India.
Free Credit Score Monitoring in India
Just like we have CreditKarma in the US, there are a bunch of startups in India that focuses on credit monitoring and reporting (technically two different things).
WishFin
Backed by Franklin Templeton and some stalwart VCs from the Silicon Valley like Ram Shriram (seed investor and Board member of Google), Neeraj Arora (Business Head of Whatsapp), and Puru Vashishtha ( Soros Fund, GTC, Fir Tree Partners), WishFin offers free credit score (CIBIL score) checks and monitoring in India.
Here’s a screenshot of how it looks.
The company that runs WishFin also runs Deals4Loans.com, so I guess they’re probably going to use the database as a lead generation engine for loans.
Ever since I signed up for this service, I’ve been getting SMS messages from different financial institutions with offers.
Well, data privacy in India! No comments.
Here’s how they show all your loans/credit cards etc on the dashboard.
As you can see, it’s pretty straight forward.
The app pulls in all your financial history from institutions that report to credit bureaus. Not sure exactly how long it takes for the data to get updated, but I’ve seen a delay of at least a week or two.
For example, the credit card payment shown as “Critical” has already been paid last week but it’s still showing up as unpaid. Perhaps, it will update next month.
Try it out.
Did I miss something here? Got a question?
Please ask in comments below.
