What is CIBIL, and what actually goes into the score?

Updated September 2026 2 min read

What CIBIL actually is

TransUnion CIBIL is a credit information company. Every lender you have borrowed from reports your accounts and your repayment behaviour to it, month after month. The bureau assembles that into a report, and the score is a summary of the report.

There are four bureaus in India — CIBIL, Experian, Equifax and CRIF High Mark. Lenders may pull any of them, and your score can differ between them because they hold slightly different data. Do not be alarmed by a twenty-point gap.

What goes into the score

• Repayment history — the largest factor by far. Whether you paid on time, every time.
• How much of your available credit you use. Running credit cards near their limit hurts even if you pay in full.
• How long your accounts have been open. A ten-year-old card with a clean record is an asset.
• The mix of credit — some secured, some unsecured, reads better than only one kind.
• Recent enquiries. Several lenders checking you in a short window pulls the score down.

What lenders look at beyond the number

This is the part most articles skip. An underwriter reads the report, not just the score. Two people with 720 can get completely different answers.

• Settled or written-off accounts. A settlement — where you paid less than owed and the lender closed it — sits on the report for years and is read very differently from a loan repaid in full. It is one of the most damaging entries you can carry.
• Days past due. The report shows month by month whether you were 30, 60 or 90 days late. One 30-day marker two years ago is noise. Repeated 60-day markers are a pattern.
• Enquiries. Six enquiries last month tells the seventh lender that six others have seen your file. Whether or not they declined, that is how it reads.
• Overdue balances, however small. A ₹400 credit card balance you forgot about will stop a ₹40 lakh loan.

What to do before applying

Pull your own report first — it is free once a year from each bureau and it does not affect your score. Check for accounts you do not recognise, closed loans still showing as open, and any overdue amount. Errors are common and take four to six weeks to correct, so find them before a lender does.

Then stop applying anywhere for at least a month before the application that matters.

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