Let’s consider a situation: as a responsible borrower you have never delayed your loan EMIs in the past or you are going to take a loan for the first time; but unfortunately, your loan applications are rejected repeatedly. After investigating the reasons behind it, you came to know that there is a default loan account present in your CIBIL report and due to this, bank managers are denying your loan applications. 

Now, when you check your CIBIL report, you notice that the default loan account is completely unknown to you. You never availed the particular loan in your life. Meanwhile, you are getting penalised for something that you didn’t even do. This is the most pathetic situation for a borrower. 

If you are going through the same kind of scenario and looking for proper guidance, then you are in the right place. In this article, we have discussed why a data mixing error happened with a borrower and the complete process to solve the data mixing error in the CIBIL report. 

What is a data mixing error in CIBIL? Why does it occur?

As one of the leading credit reporting companies in India, TransUnion CIBIL maintains a huge database of each borrower, who has taken out a loan or any other credit facility from lending institutes.

In some special cases, when two borrowers’ Name, Date of Birth, Addresses and Identification details are very similar to each other, then a data mixing error happens. As a consequence, credit information like loan accounts, and credit enquiries are overlapped.

In a populated country like India, nowadays it has become one of the most common issues for a borrower.

For example, there are two customers, Customer A (Nasima Khatun) and Customer B (Nasima Khatoon). Coincidently, their residential addresses are very similar to each other. Customer A never delays her loan EMIs and always pays her credit card dues on time.

On the other hand, Customer B is a loan defaulter, she took several app-based loans and left them unpaid. She also done very frequently loan enquiries.

Now, due to the data mix-up, Customer B’s default loan accounts and loan enquiries can be shown in Customer A’s CIBIL report. This not only damages Customer A’s CIBIL score but also destroys her creditworthiness completely.

Now, the data mixing error in CIBIL report may occur due to the fault of two parties,the Credit Bureau (TransUnion CIBIL) and the lending institutes, who report a borrower’s credit details to the respective bureau.

Typically, every lending Institute (including PSU Bank, NBFC and other Credit Institutes in India)submits their borrowers’ credit information to TransUnion CIBIL monthly basis. Usually, the borrower’s information, such as name, address and identification details are manually entered and may be wrong due to misspelt &typographical errors. At the data submission stage, due to human error a data mixing may happen.

Apart from this, at the time of data aggregation by TransUnion CIBIL, this type of data missing error may occur due to their internal technical issue.

The consequences of data mixing error in your CIBIL report:

Data mixing errors in CIBIL reports can have various consequences, affecting an individual’s financial health and creditworthiness. An untaken loan entry in your CIBIL report may create a little bit of confusion initially.

But you have to understand that such kind of discrepancies will negatively impact on credit score and spoil your financial reputation. Most of the lenders will reject your loan applications due to presence of such kind of unknown default loan account in your CIBIL report.

However, in case of a data mixing error, you can remove all the inaccurate information (including untaken loans and unauthorised credit enquiries) from your CIBIL report easily by following a few steps.

Steps to be taken to solve data mixing error in CIBIL report:

Step1: Check your CIBIL score and identify the inaccuracy:

For a data mixing error in CIBIL, mostly, borrowers came to know about it when they applied for a new loan. If the same thing happens to you and the bank manager advises you to remove the untaken loan account from your CIBIL immediately, after that only they will approve the loan application.

But typically, in the bank report, the lender name and account number are not disclosed. That’s why, it will be very difficult to identify the errors.

For this purpose, you need to check your credit report from the Transunion CIBIL official website. So, visit their official site www.cibil.com and access the annual free credit report. After getting the report, analyse its different sections (Identification information, Contact details, Account information and Enquiries) carefully.

In case of a data mixing error, you can find several incorrect information such as misspelt name, wrong DOB, addresses, contact numbers, email IDs, unknown loan accounts, unauthorised credit enquiries and so on. First, identify all those inaccuracies to raise a complaint in CIBIL.

Step2: Raise a dispute in CIBIL:

There are two different ways through which you can raise your concerns in CIBIL. In the first method, you can raise an online dispute in CIBIL by logging into your CIBIL portal. In case of any inaccuracy in personal and contact details, replace the incorrect information with the correct one.

For the untaken loan account, select the option “The loan account does not belong to me” and for the unauthorized credit enquiries, choose the option “I never applied for the loan”. And then submit the dispute.

In the second method, you can write a detailed complaint letter in CIBIL, where you can attach the relevant documents that support your claim. In the complaint letter, don’t forget to mention the CIBIL control number, which is mentioned in your CIBIL report. After submitting the dispute, you will get a Dispute ID and Service Request Number, keep them for future reference.

Step3: Contact with the lender:

As TransUnion CIBIL haven’t any authority to make any changes or deleting any datafrom a borrower’s credit report without the confirmation from the respective lending institute, who have reported the wrong information to them. In this regard, you can also contacted with the respective lending institute along with the TransUnion CIBIL for faster resolution.

Read more:

• How to rectify CIBIL report?
• How remove “Settled” status from CIBIL report?
• How to remove “Written off” status from CIBIL report?