CRILC is the Central Repository of Information on Large Credits, a system operated by the Reserve Bank of India. Lending institutions supervised by the RBI report details of their large borrowers into it on a fixed schedule, and the RBI uses the pooled data for supervision and for feedback to those reporting institutions.
This page is a neutral explainer. It describes CRILC as the RBI has set it up. It is not a product page — what TatvaRatings does is described separately below, and the two are different things.
The short answer
- Full form: Central Repository of Information on Large Credits.
- Operated by: the Reserve Bank of India.
- Introduced: 2014, under the RBI’s Framework for Revitalising Distressed Assets in the Economy dated 30 January 2014.
- Reporting trigger: aggregate exposure of ₹5 crore and above to a single borrower.
- Who reports: RBI-regulated lending institutions — scheduled commercial banks, all-India financial institutions, and, following later extensions, systemically important NBFCs and larger urban co-operative banks.
- What is reported: borrower identity, exposure, asset classification, and special mention account (SMA) status, among other fields.
- Who can see it: the RBI, and reporting institutions within the access rules the RBI sets. It is not a public database and there is no public CRILC search.
Why CRILC exists
Before CRILC, each lender saw only its own book. A borrower could be current with one bank and materially overdue with another, and neither lender had a systematic way of learning that from the other. Consortium and multiple-banking arrangements made that opacity expensive: stress surfaced late, and it surfaced separately at each lender rather than at all of them at once.
CRILC was created to pool that information at the supervisor. Once large exposures across the system are reported into one place on a common schedule, the RBI can see the aggregate position of a large borrower across all its lenders, identify incipient stress from the SMA flags, and give reporting institutions a view of a borrower that no single lender could assemble alone.
The design intent is supervisory. CRILC is a prudential and early-stress instrument, not a commercial data product, and its access rules follow from that.
The ₹5 crore threshold
The reporting trigger is aggregate exposure of ₹5 crore or more to a single borrower or counterparty.
Two details matter and are commonly misread:
- Aggregate, not per-facility. Fund-based, non-fund-based and investment exposure are aggregated for the test. Five separate ₹1.2 crore facilities to the same borrower cross the threshold; they are not five sub-threshold facilities.
- It is a reporting threshold, not a definition of “large”. Below ₹5 crore a borrower simply falls outside the CRILC return. It is not a statement about the borrower.
The threshold has been stable at ₹5 crore since inception. Where later circulars extended CRILC to new classes of reporting institution, the same ₹5 crore aggregate test was applied to them.
Who reports into CRILC
CRILC reporting has been extended in stages.
| Reporting institution | Position |
|---|---|
| Scheduled commercial banks | Reporting since CRILC’s introduction in 2014 |
| All-India financial institutions | Reporting since inception (e.g. NABARD, SIDBI, EXIM Bank, NHB) |
| Small finance banks | Brought within the CRILC framework as the category was licensed |
| NBFCs — deposit-taking (NBFC-D), and non-deposit-taking systemically important (NBFC-ND-SI) | Brought in by the RBI’s Prudential Framework for Resolution of Stressed Assets, 7 June 2019 |
| Urban co-operative banks with total assets of ₹500 crore and above | Reporting from the quarter ended 31 December 2019, per RBI circular of 16 January 2020 |
The direction of travel has been consistent: as a category of lender becomes material to system-wide large-borrower exposure, it is brought into the return.
Note what is not on that list. Entities that do not lend under RBI regulation — advisory firms, consultancies, research desks, corporates assessing a counterparty, most fintechs — are not reporting institutions and do not sit inside the framework at all. That is covered in detail on Who can access CRILC data.
What a CRILC return contains
The CRILC-Main return is filed in sections. Broadly, a reporting institution submits:
- Borrower identification — name, and identifiers such as PAN and CIN, which is what makes the data poolable across lenders in the first place.
- Exposure detail — fund-based and non-fund-based outstanding, limits sanctioned, and current position by facility.
- Asset classification — standard, sub-standard, doubtful or loss, as classified by the reporting lender.
- SMA status — the special mention account flag, described below.
- Written-off and restructured accounts, and technically written-off balances.
- Current account and CRILC-related particulars in the accompanying sections of the return.
A single large borrower therefore appears in the system once per lender, and the supervisor sees the set.
SMA classification and the weekly default report
The special mention account framework is the stress-signalling layer inside CRILC. An account is flagged before it becomes a non-performing asset, on the basis of how long a payment has been overdue.
For loans other than revolving facilities:
| Flag | Condition |
|---|---|
| SMA-0 | Principal or interest overdue between 1 and 30 days |
| SMA-1 | Principal or interest overdue between 31 and 60 days |
| SMA-2 | Principal or interest overdue between 61 and 90 days |
For cash credit and overdraft facilities, the equivalent test is how long the account has been continuously out of order: SMA-1 at 31 to 60 days, SMA-2 at 61 to 90 days.
Beyond 90 days the account is classified as non-performing and leaves the SMA ladder.
Alongside the SMA flags reported in the CRILC-Main return, there is a faster cadence for default itself. Under the RBI’s 2019 prudential framework, lenders submit a weekly report of instances of default by all borrowers with aggregate exposure of ₹5 crore and above, by close of business every Friday (or the preceding working day where Friday is a holiday). That weekly report is the fastest-moving element of the framework.
A point of confusion worth naming: under the original 2014 arrangements the weekly report was framed around SMA-2 accounts. The current requirement, since the 2018 and 2019 revisions, is a weekly report of defaults, not of SMA-2 status.
Reporting frequency
Frequency has tightened over CRILC’s life. At inception the CRILC-Main return was quarterly. It is now filed monthly by commercial banks (other than payments banks) and by the all-India financial institutions, with the weekly default report running alongside it. Urban co-operative banks inside the perimeter report CRILC quarterly. Filing is through the RBI’s own returns platform, not by ad-hoc submission.
The practical consequence: CRILC’s picture of a large borrower is refreshed on a timescale of weeks, and it reflects outstanding positions as classified by each lender.
What CRILC is used for
Three uses, in descending order of visibility:
- Supervision. The RBI sees aggregate large-borrower exposure across the system and can act on concentration and on emerging stress.
- Feedback to reporting institutions. A reporting lender can see the pooled position of a borrower it is exposed to, within the access rules — which is the point of pooling.
- Regulatory linkages. CRILC data underpins other parts of the prudential framework, including the identification of accounts for resolution under the RBI’s stressed-asset directions.
Common points of confusion
CRILC is not a credit bureau. Credit information companies — CIBIL, CRIF, Experian, Equifax in India — operate under the Credit Information Companies (Regulation) Act, 2005, are licensed by the RBI as CICs, and sell reports to specified users under that Act. CRILC is an RBI-operated supervisory return, not a licensed bureau, and it does not sell reports to anyone.
CRILC is not a credit rating. A credit rating is an opinion published by a SEBI-registered credit rating agency. CRILC holds reported exposure and classification data, not opinions.
There is no public CRILC report. People searching for a “CRILC report” are usually looking for one of three different things: the CRILC return their own institution files; the pooled borrower view a reporting institution receives; or simply an explanation of the system, which is this page. There is no public-facing lookup.
CRILC is not the MCA charge index. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs publishes an index of charges registered against companies, which names charge-holder banks and is open to public users. That is a separate registry, on a different basis, holding secured-charge particulars rather than exposure and classification data.
RBI sources for this page
Everything above is taken from the RBI’s own published material. Check it there rather than here.
- Prudential Framework for Resolution of Stressed Assets, 7 June 2019 — the entities covered, the ₹5 crore aggregate-exposure threshold, monthly CRILC-Main filing, the weekly default report, and the SMA-0/1/2 day bands including the separate cash-credit and overdraft test.
- Reporting of Large Exposures to CRILC — UCBs, 16 January 2020 — urban co-operative banks with total assets of ₹500 crore and above, reporting from the quarter ended 31 December 2019.
- RBI list of supervisory returns — “Central Repository of Information on Large Credits (CRILC) – Main”, monthly, filed by AIFIs and all commercial banks other than payments banks.
- Master Direction on Filing of Supervisory Returns, 2024 — CRILC defined by reference to the Framework for Revitalising Distressed Assets in the Economy dated 30 January 2014.
What TatvaRatings is
Stated separately, without comparison.
TatvaRatings is a private database built entirely from credit rating press releases that seven SEBI-registered rating agencies publish on their own websites. Those releases routinely carry a lender-wise annexure naming the banks behind each rated facility. TatvaRatings parses those documents into structured records — borrowers, rating actions, rated facilities, key financials, rating drivers, and the lender-wise annexure — and indexes the annexure from the lender’s side, so a query can begin with a bank rather than with a borrower.
Routes to lender-exposure data for institutions outside the CRILC framework are set out on CRILC alternatives.
It holds no CRILC data, no bureau data, and no confidential lender submissions. It carries no registration, licence or recognition from the RBI or SEBI, and none is claimed. Its universe is rated borrowers only, its figures are floors rather than totals, and the annexure it parses reflects a sanctioned position as at a rating action date. Those boundaries are specified in full on Data limits, and the corpus figures — 70,337 rating actions and 179,857 lender-exposure rows as at 29 August 2026 — are on Coverage.
Related
- Who can access CRILC data — eligibility, in detail
- How to read a rating press release — including the lender-wise annexure
- Sources — the public archives every TatvaRatings record traces to