All about 'Free' credit information reports
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has made it mandatory for all credit information agencies in the country to give a free full credit report (FFCR) without any charge, on request, once a calendar year to individuals whose credit history is available. This rule has come into force from 1 January 2017.
What is a CIR?
A credit information report (CIR) contains details of your credit history, as collated by a credit information company, or a credit bureau. Whenever you apply for a loan, the lender asks a credit bureau to check if you have paid earlier dues on time. This forms a part of your overall credit history and will reflect in your CIR. Individuals are assigned a score by CIRs, which helps to check their eligibility for a loan. According to Cibil, the oldest such agency in India, 79% of loans approved are for individuals with a score of more than 750 (the range is 300-900).
Cost of a ‘free’ report
The RBI has told all credit bureaus to display the process of getting a free report on their websites, which the companies have done. However, the process and the time taken to get this report varies for all of them. Here is the story of Mint Money’s search for the free report, with all the credit bureaus.
CRIF High Mark: When you access the site, you will find a link to the process for a free credit report on the home page (www.crifhighmark.com). After you click the link, you have to first provide your Know-Your -Customer (KYC) details such as: name, address, email, mobile number and Permanent Account Number (PAN). The company took 2 days to verify the details. It then sent an email, which led to a webpage. Here one needs to authenticate her credit history, by answering a set of questions.
At this step, this correspondent was asked to register on the website to activate the account. Once the authentication was done, the report came in a day’s time on email. This correspondent got a report from CRIF High Mark in a total of 7 days. No charges were paid.
Full Report : LiveMint