Faster scores, tighter checks — the new DNA of lending in 2026

The pattern #181

Faster scores, tighter checks — the new DNA of lending in 2026

Mayank Jain

Head - Marketing and Content

Nov 28, 2025

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the 181st edition of The Pattern, a weekly where we dive into the latest from the world of economy, finance and technology. Let’s get started!

Two pieces of news surfaced this week that, at first glance, seem unrelated.

The RBI has proposed that credit bureaus update consumer credit scores weekly instead of every 30-45 days. It’s an inconspicuous line in a draft document, but it has big consequences. A credit card bill paid today could reflect in your score as early as next week. A closed loan could clean up your report faster than before.

Meanwhile, a very different conversation is picking up momentum: should banks be allowed (or even encouraged) to use criminal record checks during loan approval?

Some lenders already do this quietly for high-value or secured products, but making it a standard filter across retail credit is still a debate. However, the fact that mainstream polls are even asking the question tells you something about where the industry’s head is at.

One story is about making credit information fresher. The other is about making underwriting broader. Together, they reveal an interesting pattern about the direction in which Indian lending is moving:

Credit is becoming increasingly real-time
A weekly score update is not really about the number. It’s about the promise that a borrower’s past is no longer a static verdict. It becomes fluid and responsive.

For those who have long felt that the credit system punishes people long after they’ve fixed their mistakes, this is a step toward fairness. For lenders, it means risk models that align more closely with actual borrower behaviour. No more underwriting based on 45 day-old snapshots.

But real-time data also comes with expectations. If credit scores can move weekly, why can’t approvals? Why can’t disbursals be quicker?

These questions haven’t come up yet, but I feel a sneaky feeling they will.

Lenders are looking for a different kind of certainty
The parallel movement toward criminal record checks is a search for something credit scores can’t offer: a perception of predictability in an environment that feels increasingly uncertain.

High-velocity credit, digital journeys, unsecured products, instant approvals — all of this increases exposure. Banks know that fraud is rising. Defaults behave differently in digital portfolios. Consumers borrow more frequently from more places.

Traditional signals don’t always tell the full story.

So lenders are reaching for something outside the financial domain; a kind of behavioural or moral risk assessment. Whether this is justified, fair, or even effective is a separate debate. What matters is the direction: underwriting is expanding outward, beyond numbers.

These two shifts collide at the same point: the underwriting architecture
Real-time inputs and multi-layered checks demand a system that can process both without slowing down. Legacy LOS-based underwriting — built for monthly bureau pulls and fixed rules — struggles here.

A world with weekly score updates and broader background checks will need decisioning systems that are:

Faster
More modular
More transparent
And capable of handling a wider set of signals

This isn’t a not-so-subtle product pitch. It’s inevitable. You cannot keep adding input without rethinking the engine.

The Indian credit system is trying to do two things at once:

Be more forgiving of change, by updating credit scores more frequently
Be less forgiving of risk, by expanding what counts as risk

And that tension will define the next phase of lending.

Borrowers will feel it as both opportunity and scrutiny. Lenders will experience it as both agility and complexity. And underwriting systems will determine who adapts and who gets left behind.

This is all for this week. I’ll see you in the next one.

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