Credit Score
Credit Report
What a credit report is: your loan and card record with CIBIL, Experian, Equifax and CRIF — accounts, scores, enquiries — free once a year.
A credit report is the evidence behind your credit score: every loan and credit card a lender has reported, its sanctioned limit or amount, the outstanding balance, your repayment status and the days-past-due figure. It also holds your personal details and a list of the lenders who pulled the report (enquiries). Bureaus report what lenders give them, on the RBI reporting cycle — four reference dates a month since July 2026 — so a closed account or a cleared balance can take weeks to appear. Reading your own report is free once a year from each bureau and does not affect your score.
Example
A report still shows a personal loan as open three months after you cleared it. That is an inaccuracy to dispute, not a score problem.
Read the full chapter on the Credit Score Hub → The RBI rules, the bureaus and the dispute process behind this term.