Reading a bureau pull
The bureau report is the closest thing Indian lending has to a shared memory. Here is what is actually in one, and how experienced desks read it in ninety seconds.
What a bureau is, and what a pull returns
India’s credit bureaus — TransUnion CIBIL, Equifax, Experian and CRIF High Mark — collect repayment behaviour from lenders and return it as a report when a lender enquires. A pull typically returns a score (roughly 300–900), the borrower’s account trades (loans and cards, open and closed), a month-by-month payment history per account, and the trail of recent enquiries by other lenders.
The score is a summary, not the story. Two borrowers at 720 can be entirely different risks — one deleveraging cleanly, one accelerating into trouble — and only the account detail tells you which.
The ninety-second read
Experienced underwriters go past the score in a fixed order: current overdue amounts, then the DPD (days-past-due) grid for recent months, then enquiry velocity, then the obligations picture.
- Current overdues — any account presently past due is a live problem, whatever the score says.
- DPD trajectory — a clean grid that recently turned 30+ is deterioration in motion; old, settled lates matter far less.
- Enquiry velocity — many enquiries in recent weeks reads as credit-hungry — often the strongest early-warning signal in short term lending.
- Written-off & settled flags — prior write-offs and settlements reshape the conversation regardless of the current score.
- Reported EMIs — the bureau’s obligation list feeds FOIR — and gaps between reported EMIs and declared obligations are themselves a flag.
Bureau data as policy, not just judgement
Digital journeys turn the bureau read into rules: minimum score, no current overdues, enquiry caps, no write-offs within a window. These bureau gates are what make instant approval defensible — the decision is a configured policy anyone can audit, not a model’s mood.
Two practical notes: pull early enough to avoid wasting effort on files policy will reject, and store the raw report against the loan — future disputes and audits will ask for the evidence as of decision time.
How Loano handles it
Loano pulls Equifax, TransUnion CIBIL and Experian (including a mobile-number-first Experian option useful early in the funnel), lands score and structured data on the lead with the PDF attached, pre-fills bureau-reported EMIs into FOIR, logs every pull with its raw response, and lets the automated portal’s approval gates key off the result — under rules you configure per entity.
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