How personal loans can help in boosting your credit score?

If you have been going from pillar to post striving to get a personal loan application accepted by a lender, but always seem to hit a dead-end, your low CIBIL Credit Score could be the culprit. Lenders these days are awfully cautious of customers with less-than-ideal credit scores, since it shows your poor credit management skills, which will lead to a bad credit history.

Yet, taking personal loans can boost your credit score considerably, and quicker than other means if you follow the five pointers below.

Listed here are few ways by which you can raise your CIBIL Credit Score this year:

Getting the monetary discipline right
If you already happen to own a credit card and have piled up EMIs and dues, it is better to take out a personal loan and repay them. Since credit card interest rates will be way more than those of personal loans, you will end up saving a lot of money. Opt for an EMI you can easily manage and be consistent in the repayment of your personal loan installments. The more disciplined you are, higher will your score get. One simple way to make sure that do not forget or delay your payments is to authorise the lender for auto-deduction of the EMI in the beginning of every month throughout the loan tenure. You can plan your monthly finances with the remaining amount.

Frugality pays when you are already bogged down by debts
If you are quite serious about improving your credit score in the immediate future, please bring down the liberal credit card swipes. It might seem like the easiest thing to do even when you don’t have enough left in the salary/savings account. However, it is strongly advised that you keep your credit card utilisation below 30% of the permitted limit. Being frugal will also help you put more towards your personal loan repayment. This shows a responsible way of handling credit and credit bureaus love that.

Prove that you can handle all kinds of credit
Like they say, ‘Variety is the spice of life’ and it holds true for debts and credit management too. Having a smart combo of secured as well as unsecured loans will boost your CIBIL Credit Score sooner than expected. For instance, have a credit card, a secured loan like gold loan, auto loan or home loan, and an unsecured loan like personal loan or education loan. Do not miss or delay even one EMI payment. It’s all a game of consistency.

Restrain from closing your loans prematurely
Lenders not only want to assess your short-term credit worthiness, but also your long-term credit worthiness. For instance, if you have taken a 15-year housing loan and pre-close it in 10 years, it is not something they look at favourably. Instead, you can pay off a bulk of the loan without closing it. This will reduce the interest significantly and you will save loads of money without jeopardising your credit score.

Cancellation of Credit Card(s)
Your Score also rests on how long a customer manages to hold any credit account. If you cancel one or more of your credit cards, credit bureaus will only see it as a wrong move. Even if you don’t have much use for credit card, please use it for fuel purchase, grocery shopping or movie ticket booking. As these amounts are less likely to exceed the credit card limit, you can boost your score easily this way. This has the added benefit of you being able to focus on repaying your personal loan(s) without straining your monthly budget.

Time to get your skates on and achieve that ideal credit score!

(The writer is Founder and CEO of Qbera.com)