CIBIL Transunion is the leading Credit Bureau of India with with the largest number of credit information records. RBI the Indian Financial System regulator has mandated every Financial Institution including Banks in India to submit Lending Data to atleast one Credit Bureau / Information company. Over 800 FIs upload data about Borrowers on a monthly basis to CIBIL.
We’ll see what kind of Data Repository CIBIL is Maintaining and the Definition / Meaning of each of these terms,
Individual Consumer Database CIBIL has Information on 135mn Indian / NRI individuals or consumers spread across 230mn accounts [One customer may have multiple accounts for example – Student Loan and Bike Loan]. Data available since 1995 and month-by-month updates are ongoing.
Commercial Entities [Firms / LLCs / Companies, etc ] Database This repository currently has 2mn entities spread on 10mn accounts. [Entity “A” may have Credit Card, Business Loan, Machinery Loan etc, thus the Number of Accounts is higher than the number of Entities]
Mortgage Database (CIBIL Mortgage Check) This essentially holds Property / Real Estate Deeds which can be queried for Double Financing on the same property. This is different from the one being formed by the government as it is not open to end customers. Currently, data on 8mn properties is available.
Fraud Database (CIBIL Detect) Repository of frauds committed as reported by banks. It is set up in collaboration with IBA. Purely to be used by banks to identify names that have been involved in frauds. Source is banks only while talks with SEBI are on to source information from it as well.
Data Management Challenges for CIBIL
Biggest challenge is data management, collection and dissemination. Monthly data collection happens generally by the 15th of every month whereby information pertaining to the repayment behavior of a borrower is collected, fields like Rate of Interest and Tenure are not mandatory. CIBIL is working to speed up the process.
With such Financial Analytics Tools at the disposal of Lending Institutions, decisions making help financiers consume data better and help in faster data usage. CIBIL internally monitors credit quality and quality of acquisition as well, which comes as a great blessing in disguise for Banking Stocks Investors. ~30% of people coming to banks are new customers. Balance 70% already have a record with the bureau. So Borrowers Beware, CIBIL is Watching You.