How to check and improve your credit score

Go to each bureau's own website and request the free full credit report. RBI requires every credit information company to provide one to each individual, once a calendar year, at no charge.

Use the bureaus directly rather than third-party apps and lending marketplaces. Those typically show a score without the underlying report, and their business model is generating loan leads from the data you give them.

Get all four. Lenders subscribe to different bureaus, and the reports genuinely differ — an account reported to one may be missing or wrong on another.

Verification usually requires your PAN, date of birth and a mobile OTP. Where the mobile on file with lenders is out of date, verification can fail, which is another reason to keep your registered numbers current.

Checking your own report is recorded as a soft enquiry, which is visible to you and not to lenders assessing you, and has no effect on your score. This is the most persistent myth in Indian personal finance and it is simply wrong.

Diarise it. Once a year from each bureau, staggered across the year, gives you effectively quarterly visibility for nothing.

The score is a summary; the report is the evidence. Read the account-level detail rather than glancing at the number.

Look for accounts you do not recognise. An unfamiliar loan or credit card is the earliest and clearest signal of identity misuse, and it is the reason to check even if you have no plans to borrow.

Look for closed accounts still showing as open. Lenders frequently fail to report closure, and an old card shown as active with a balance distorts your utilisation and your total exposure.

Look for wrong amounts, wrong dates, a settled account marked as written off, or a 'settled' status where you paid in full — the distinction matters, because 'settled' means the lender accepted less than the full amount and is read badly by future lenders.

Look for enquiries you did not initiate. Multiple hard enquiries you do not recognise suggest applications made in your name.

Check the personal information section too: a wrong PAN, a wrong date of birth or an address you have never lived at can indicate mixed files, where someone else's data has been merged with yours.

Note that a bureau report shows only credit — loans, cards and overdrafts. Utility bills, rent and salary do not appear, which is why building a file requires an actual credit product.

Repayment history is the largest factor. A single payment more than 30 days late is recorded and takes considerable time to fade. Automate minimum payments and EMI mandates so that a missed payment is never a matter of forgetting.

Credit utilisation — the share of your card limits in use — is the second. Keeping it low, well under a third and ideally under a tenth, is one of the few levers you can move within a month. Note that utilisation is measured on the statement date, so paying down before the statement generates, not merely by the due date, is what produces a low reported figure.

Age of accounts counts, which is why closing your oldest credit card is usually a mistake even if you no longer use it. Keep it open with a small recurring spend.

Credit mix — a combination of secured and unsecured credit — counts modestly. It is not worth taking a loan you do not need to improve.

Hard enquiries count. Applying to several lenders in a short window looks like distress. Use lenders' own eligibility checkers, which are soft enquiries, before making a formal application.

Settlements are damaging and are frequently offered as relief. A 'settled' status tells every future lender that you paid less than you owed, and it stays on the report. Where a payment plan is possible, it is almost always better than a settlement.

There is no legal minimum score, and each lender sets its own thresholds and its own internal scoring alongside the bureau score.

Raise a dispute on the bureau's own portal. It is free, and the bureau must take it up with the lender that reported the entry. RBI rules prescribe a period within which credit information companies and lenders must resolve complaints, with compensation payable for delay beyond it — a provision very few people invoke.

Raise the same dispute with the lender in parallel, in writing, because the correction ultimately has to come from them.

Keep the dispute reference numbers and follow up. Where a bureau or lender fails to resolve within the prescribed period, escalate free to the RBI Ombudsman on 14448 — credit information complaints are within its scope, and its award binds the institution.

For fraudulent accounts, attach the acknowledgement from cybercrime.gov.in and, where you have one, the FIR. That converts a disputed entry into a documented fraud claim.

If you have no credit history at all — a thin file — the problem is different and often harder than a low score, because there is nothing to assess. A secured credit card against a fixed deposit is the standard route: the deposit becomes the limit, the card reports like any other, and a file starts building.

A small consumer durable loan repaid on schedule, or being added as an add-on cardholder on a family member's long-standing account, also creates history.

Expect months, not weeks. A file takes time to establish and a damaged one takes time to recover. Anyone offering to fix a credit score for a fee is selling something that does not exist — the only lawful routes are correcting errors and repaying on time.