Many people have at some time or the other faced the problem of being denied a loan or a credit card on grounds of not being eligible for the same due to bad credit history. Often people are unable to understand why their name is in the list of defaulters and ways to remove their names from the same.

Credit Information Bureau (INDIA) Limited (CIBIL) is the central repository of credit information of all borrowers. It contains data of the credit history of all borrowers associated with the member banks/financial institutions.

When a borrower approaches for loan to a bank, the bank first gathers a Credit Information Report (CIR) of the borrower from CIBIL and on the basis of that judges the credit worthiness of the borrower and decides whether to grant him credit or not.

CIR is a factual report which gives an idea on the credit payment history of the borrower which has been compiled from information collected from different credit grantors based on a scorecard model. It helps banks to prevent the risk of bad loans by lending to non credit worthy borrowers.

A control number is generated every time a CIR is requested from CIBIL by the bank. Control number refers to a nine digit unique number which enables CIBIL to track an individual's credit report from its database.

Every time bank seeks for credit report of an individual from CIBIL, a new control number is generated.

How can one check his Credit Information Report (CIR)

Every individual has the right to access his Credit Information Report (CIR). It is through this that a person can check and analyze whether he is in the defaulter list of the concerned bank or not.