5 Things You Should Know about Credit Monitoring

Imagine you going through a lot of pain to maintain that perfect credit score. You make all your payments on time, no defaults and there is no chance of you being in bad books of credit. All of a sudden you encounter an emergency and decide on applying for a personal loan. When applied for the same, you are rest assured that your loan will be sanctioned within no time; all of a sudden you receive a bad news stating your loan has been rejected! Now you are in a confused state on how this happened and how is it possible on the first place, because you used to make all your payments on time.

After a brief inquiry, you happen to know that you are a victim of identity theft and your information is used for making various financial purchases. Your banker understands the same and suggests you opt for a credit monitoring plan. But what is a credit monitoring plan? Is that necessary for me? How is it going to be beneficial for me? If you have been a victim of identity theft, the answers to such questions are mentioned below:

Credit Monitoring

Let us first understand what is credit monitoring. A credit monitoring service is offered by various third party companies who can keep a track on your credit related transactions and maintain your credit score for future transactions. Customers usually use this service to guard them from identity theft and also to improve cibil score.A credit monitoring service keeps a close eye on your credit activity and notifies you of any credit transactions happening towards your account. The transactions can include any hard inquiry, purchase of a new loan, etc. Some monitoring services also give you a comprehensive tracking of the cibil scores.

How Good and Bad Credit Affects the Credit Score?

Credit is an integral part of life today in the form of rolling credit when we swipe our credit cards or in the form on various loans that we may take from time to time. Gone are the days when credit was supposed to be a bad thing. Earlier generations shied away from taking loans and borrowing was frowned upon. This is changed in the past few decades, now loans are no longer a dirty word; getting loans is simpler, and there are multiple avenues available for people who are seeking credit. Credit per se is not bad and any stigma that may have been attached to it has been removed in the last few years but the way the borrower treats credit makes it good or bad. 

Is Credit Good or Bad?

As stated above the way credit is treated makes it good or bad and there is no good credit or bad credit per se. So how does the borrower’s treatment make credit good or bad?

All loans are extended with an understanding that the borrower will repay then in a timely fashion as per the agreed terms and conditions. This essentially means that the borrower needs to pay the EMIs on time every month and in case of credit cards pay the amount due on or before the due date. Not doing so means that the borrower has defaulted on the payment thus apart from attracting a penalty charges and interest there is a negative impact on the credit score too. Repayment history is the biggest contributor to the score calculation and all delays in paying EMIs and credit card dues are reported to the rating agency thereby affecting the credit score negatively for a considerable time.