Your Mobile Bill Payment History Will Impact Your Credit Rating In India

[rajanmehta 4,056]

CIBIL To include Mobile Bill Payment History To Check Credit Worthiness

Source

Default on your mobile bill and you may soon become ineligible for a home loan or a car loan. Non-payment of telephone bills will also rule out the possibilities of getting a new credit card or even another mobile number.

Cibil, the country's credit information bureau, which tracks credit history of consumers, is taking steps to include mobile and telephone bill payment history to calculate the credit worthiness of an individual. It has already launched a pilot initiative with Vodafone's post-paid customers and is in talks with the country's largest telco by customers, Bharti Airtel, for a similar project.

It is also learnt to have approached other leading telcos for tie-ups. "Our aim is to eventually link the telecom utility payment history to the banking and financial records of customers and make it available as a Cibil record to banks and other financial institutions," Cibil managing director Arun Thukral said.

Cibil issues a numerical score out of 900, which indicates a customer's payments history of loans. This score is issued to banks that need to know financial history of a prospective borrower. The agency is now looking at adding telecom bill payments of post-paid customers, landline users and broadband subscribers as a weightage in that Cibil score.

Only 5% or about 45 million of the 900 million mobile connections in the country have a post-paid connection, but this represents the high-end customer base in the nation. The country also has about 50 million and 14 million landline and broadband customers, respectively.

Once the tie-ups with telcos are in place, Banks such as ICICI, HDFC, SBI and others may see an individual's phone bill payment history to deny or approve a car, credit card or housing loan.

"The database can also be used by a telecom service provider when issuing a post-paid number to an individual. It will lower delinquencies and improve their quality of customers," Arun Thukral added.

Vodafone confirmed the deal with Cibil and said it had entered into an agreement with the credit bureau and TransUnion Software Service Pvt Ltd, a move that would enable it to assign credit limits and improve customer service.

Prior to this, Vodafone's subscribers were provided with a pre-assigned minimum credit limit, until the full credit validation process is completed.

This, at times, restricts the customer's ability to use services beyond a point, especially data and value-added services ( VAS), the company added.

Other telcos are also set to come on board soon. "We are exploring the possibility of mutual partnership to leverage Cibil and Bharti's database for the benefit of the industry and both the organisations. Both the organisations carry rich database of consumer behavior and history which can be used for customer profiling based on financial as well as telecom spend," Bharti spokesperson told ET.

RCOM confirmed that Cibil had approached the telco with a proposal to use their database to enable the company profile our post-paid customers.

[KapilAgrawal 340]

This is GREAT !!! Atleast people knowing about this will pay their phone bills on time

[ni0987 179]

Too intrusive!

[basheerbr 18]

very good project.

[ramtech 47]

Not a welcome move. Greedy operators will for wrong bill in thousands and customers are forced to pay. Atleat present scenario it is not advisable. Until there is stringent penalties for wrong billing and vas activations without consumers consent.

[commonman 228]

someone will have to take cibil to court for giving a wrong credit score on account of non-payment of inflated telephone bill.

[rajanmehta 4,056]

Even the current CIBIL Database related to loans/credit cards has lot of errors and individuals are at a disadvantage in getting the errors rectified. I shudder to think what's going to happen when telcos will submit wholesale data inclusive of terrible billing errors. Imagine a scenario when someone is slapped with a faulty bill running into thousands by the operator (which is not a rarity by any means), customer disputes it and does not pay. Operator will file data with CIBIL as default, ruining the credit history of the individual.

[KumaarShah 143]

Only way out of this issue, is to surrender all postpaid connections and go prepaid.... Or even that is vulnerable to CIBIL's rule? I am myself a victim of CIBIL's bad credit rating. It was about 7 years back, now it has been finally rectified and I have a score of around 865 now. I am happy now atleast, but trust me 7 years to rectify mistakes is not a joke by any standard.

[csmart 472]

^^^ its India. It takes university a year to rectify spelling mistake on mark sheet and convocation certificate resulting in a loss of year for the student. now what your point?

Coming back to the topic, it is bad move when every one is aware that bills are not genuine and customers have to fight with Telcos every now and then. CIBIL is trying to gain advantage our other rating cos like CRISIL to get more customers. this is nothing more than marketing gimic. in US, all utility bills make part of credit ratings. but then there customer can sue telcos and get millions in case of wrong billing. In India, you have to pay to get rectified bills. so not at all acceptable.

[aalok 442]

^ true.. the only way out is as mentioned by Kumar Sir.. get all postpaid connections converted to prepaid and have complete peace of mind..

[RiteshDharod 5]

How to check the Ratings ?

[Arun 795]

https://www.cibil.com/online/manageCustomerDetails.do?action=showAddPaymentPage