When you apply for a New Credit Card, your lender fetches your Credit Information from Credit Bureaus (mainly, CIBIL). This is known as CIBIL Inquiry.
About CIBIL Inquiry and its Impact on Your Credit Score:
There are two types of CIBIL Inquiries, Hard Inquiry & Soft Inquiry. Read my post: Hard Inquiry vs Soft Inquiry Explained: Will it affect Credit Score? to know more about it.
In simple words, these processes take place when you request a New Credit Card or Loan.
- Your Financial Institution fetches your Credit History from CIBIL. This process is called the CIBIL Inquiry.
- Your Financial Institution gets your ‘Credit Profile’ and assesses your Creditworthiness.
- The CIBIL Inquiry that took place just now is instantly recorded on your CIBIL report for the future. Your CIBIL Score gets impacted due to the CIBIL Inquiry.
All CIBIL Inquiries are associated with an ‘Amount’, which specifies the ‘impact magnitude’ of the inquiry on your CIBIL Report. The higher the amount, the more it will impact your CIBIL Score.
Again, an ‘impact’ doesn’t necessarily mean your CIBIL Score will decrease. There are lots of factors that decide the actual CIBIL Score. I have discussed this in my post Factors that Affect your Credit Score Positively/Negatively. Read that post to know more.
CIBIL Inquiry Amounts:
Below are the banks with their CIBIL Inquiry Amounts. The higher the amount, the more your CIBIL Score will be impacted.
- AU Bank: ₹100
- Axis Bank: ₹10000
- BOB: ₹1000 / ₹50000
- Citi Bank: ₹100000
- HDFC Bank: ₹1000 / ₹10000
- ICICI Bank: ₹10000 / ₹100000
- IDFC First Bank: ₹10000 / ₹20000
- IndusInd Bank: ₹10000 / ₹50000
- HSBC Bank: ₹10000
- Kotak Bank: ₹50000
- RBL Bank: ₹1000
- SBI: ₹100
- Standard Chartered Bank: ₹50000
Note: Banks with Multiple Inquiry Amounts mean they can do inquiries of either of those amounts. For example, for some users, HDFC does ₹1000 inquiry, but for some, it is ₹10000. Since this data is completely crowdsourced and not taken from any official documents, you should be prepared about higher inquiry amounts, just in case.
How to Interpret the CIBIL Inquiry Amount? What does it mean?
Simply put, credit inquiries of ₹100 to ₹1000 generally don’t impact your Credit Scores at all. So, you can afford to apply for subsequent credit cards or loans without worries.
However, higher amounts like ₹10000 - ₹100000 are likely to impact your CIBIL Scores, and you should not apply for too many Credit Cards or Loans from these financial institutions within a small time period. That will negatively impact your Credit Scores by a large margin.
That’s the role of CIBIL Inquiry Amounts and this is how you can interpret them.
Will too many CIBIL Inquiries decrease my Credit Score?
Ans: In my post Factors that Affect your Credit Score Positively/Negatively, I have discussed that too many CIBIL Inquiries within a short span of time can negatively affect your Credit Score.
It is pretty obvious that, if you keep asking for new loans and credit cards every few days, it gives a sign to the lenders that you may be in a debt, and urgently need money. This is not a good sign at all.
Once your lender fetches your CIBIL Score, they will be able to see previously done CIBIL Inquiries and their amounts (and obviously how your CIBIL Score has been affected). If they find you constantly asking for new credits, one of the following things may happen:
- You may get a lower credit limit than what you would have got if your CIBIL Report didn’t have too many recent inquiries.
- You may get a lower variant credit card than what you would have been eligible for if your CIBIL Report didn’t have too many recent inquiries.
- Last but not least, especially if you are starting out with credit cards (or have a very less credit age/credit history), the lender might decide to cancel your Credit Card application altogether.
This is one of the major reasons why a lot of Credit Card Applications get rejected.
Although there is no hard and fast rule, a thumb rule is not to apply for too many loans/credit cards within a span of 30 days. How many credit inquiries your CIBIL Can afford at the same time again varies from person to person, and generally, people with higher credit age and disciplined payment behavior may get an advantage over here.
Q: Taking Credit Cards against Fixed Deposit does CIBIL Inquiry?
Ans: No. Credit Cards against Fixed Deposits are called Secured Credit Cards, and they are offered without any Credit History check. CIBIL Inquiry is NOT done here. Read my post: Secured Credit Card against Fixed Deposit: Should you take? [Advantages/Disadvantages] to know more about it.
Q: Do BNPL Cards do a Hard Inquiry? Will it impact CIBIL?
Ans: No. BNPL Cards fetches your CIBIL Score via Soft Inquiries. They don’t have the authorization to do a hard inquiry. So it won’t impact your CIBIL Scores. This is true for any BNPL Card (Slice, LazyPay, Simpl, etc.)
Btw, although BNPL Cards are offered without CIBIL Inquiries, that doesn’t mean the BNPL Account won’t be reported to CIBIL at the end of each month. They will show up as Loan Accounts. But we are not talking about Credit Accounts here. We are only concerned with CIBIL Inquiries, and BNPL Cards won’t give you any.
Q: Can I remove CIBIL Inquiries from my Credit Report?
Ans: No. Inquiries are Permanent. You cannot remove it from your CIBIL.
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