What CIBIL Score Is Needed for a Car Loan in India

What CIBIL Score Is Needed for a Car Loan in India

A few weeks ago, a reader wrote in through FingTaj's contact page with a question that stuck with me: he had a stable job, a healthy down payment saved up, and had already picked out the exact hatchback he wanted at the dealership. The salesperson had told him verbally that "loan approval is not a problem." Then the dealership's finance partner ran his credit check, and the pre-approved rate he'd been quoted verbally quietly disappeared, replaced by a much higher rate with a note that his file would need "additional review." His CIBIL score, it turned out, was sitting at 668 — comfortably below what most car loan underwriters actually want to see, even though nobody had told him that number mattered until the moment it did. This scenario plays out at dealerships across India every single day, and in my years working in equity dealing and financial operations, I've noticed that car loans occupy a strange blind spot in most people's financial plann…