Not sure what your credit report shows? Here’s what it means!

Are you looking at your CIBIL report but cannot understand its components? Are you wondering why is your CIBIL score low even though your CIBIL report is reasonably good? Does your CIBIL report show ‘DPD’ against one of your accounts?

“One of the most crucial element of your credit report, which has a significant impact on your credit score, is the “Days Past Due” (DPD) information. This information is part of the “Accounts” section of your credit report and indicates how well you have been servicing your loan or credit card- Are you paying your loan EMIs/Credit Card bills on time each month? Have you missed payment of EMIs/ credit card bill? If yes by how many days and in which month?” says Harshala Chandorkar, senior vice president, consumer services at CIBIL.

Basically, the DPD indicates how long the payment for a loan or a credit has been delayed. “Anything other than “000” and “XXX” reflecting in your “DPD” section would mean that you have missed payments on your loan or credit card account,” adds Chandorkar.

For instance, if you missed your payment for four months, your DPD section would show 30 for the first month, 60 for the second month, 90 for the corresponding third month and 120 for the fourth month. This basically means that you have not made the payments for four months or 120 days continuously.

One must remember that the credit report is prepared on the basis of an individual’s financial behavior in the past 36 months. If the delay has happened more than 3 years ago, then it will have negligible or no impact.

“If your credit report shows ‘000’, then it indicates “no days past due” for that particular month and implies that you have been regular with the payments of your loan or credit card. ‘XXX’ indicates that the member bank or credit institution has not reported information in this month to CIBIL on that loan or credit card account,” she states.

There are no prizes for guessing that other than these, any other figure in your DPD section would alert the credit institutions as it gives them an indication of your inability to service the loan well. This in turn could hamper your chances for getting a loan in the long run!