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Has your credit score dropped suddenly and your credit bureau won’t tell you why? Has a loan you haven’t taken appeared in your credit report, and has the bureau asked you to approach the financial institution for resolution? You can now file a complaint with the Reserve Bank of India against credit bureaus if the latter does not resolve your queries satisfactorily or in a timely manner.
Last week, the Reserve Bank of India said it would include credit bureaus under its integrated ombudsman scheme, which already covers banks, non-bank financial companies (NBFCs) and payment operators.
“This is a first regulatory measure that will hold bureaus accountable. Until now, credit bureaus did as they pleased because they have a monopoly in the industry and customers had no recourse whatsoever,” said Kashif Ansari, assistant professor at Hansraj College, University of Delhi. There are four credit bureaus in India–Equifax, Experian, TransUnion CIBIL and CRIF Highmark.
How it works
RBI’s integrated ombudsman scheme redresses customers’ grievances when the concerned financial entities fail to provide a solution. This means that the customer has to first raise their grievance with the credit bureau. If the bureau fails to resolve the complaint to the customer’s satisfaction or does not respond within 30 days of filing the complaint, the customer can approach the RBI.
Complaints can be filed online on the complaint management system, via email at crpc@rbi.org.in, through post to the ‘centralised receipt and processing centre’ in Chandigarh or on call at toll-free number 14448. Customers can track their complaint and carry necessary correspondence only through the CMS portal.
Pain point
Ansari said credit bureaus in India follow an opaque system to determine credit scores and customers have no recourse if they want to report an unjust poor score or know the reason so that they can take corrective steps. In fact, when customers report a discrepancy in their credit reports, such as incorrect loan data, to a bureau, the latter either directs the customer to the concerned financial institution or registers the complaint only to raise it with the bank or NBFC in question.
“The bureau merely becomes an intermediary between the customer and the bank and resolution takes several months,” said Ansari.
In a Twitter space conducted on 5 August about RBI’s move to include bureaus under its ambit, all the attendees sharing their experiences with credit bureaus in India voiced the same pain point that grievance redressal time of all the four bureaus is painfully long and that this move should hopefully solve that.
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