The question I’m asked most often, in some form or another, is this: I earn ₹45,000 a month, why is my eligibility lower than my colleague’s who earns the same? Nine times out of ten the answer isn’t the credit score, the employer, or the loan purpose. It’s that one salary lands in a bank account on a predictable date every month and the other partly doesn’t.
I want to be careful about what I’m saying here, because this gets misread. Cash income is real income. Plenty of good, hard-working people are paid in cash, or part in cash, and none of that is their doing — it’s how their employer runs payroll. What I’m describing isn’t a judgment about the borrower. It’s a limitation on what I, sitting on the credit side, am able to verify.
What an underwriter is actually reading
When your file reaches me, the bank statement does most of the talking. I’m not scanning it for how you spend money. I’m looking for four specific things.
A recurring credit that looks like a salary. Same rough amount, same rough date, month after month, ideally with a narration that identifies your employer. Three to six months of that and I can treat your income as established. A single large credit, or credits that vary wildly in size and timing, tell me much less — even when they add up to more.
Closing balances at month-end. Not the peak balance mid-month. What’s left the day before the next salary lands. A file that runs to near-zero every month is telling me the current income is fully spent, and an EMI has to come from somewhere.
Bounce history. A returned EMI, a failed auto-debit, a cheque return. One old bounce with a clean run since is usually explainable. A pattern in the last six months is the single hardest thing to write past, because it’s direct evidence of what happens when money is tight.
Existing obligations. Every EMI and auto-debit visible in the statement, which then goes into the FOIR arithmetic — we’ve written about what FOIR means and how it decides your loan amount separately.
Notice that none of these are about the amount of your income. They’re about its regularity, visibility and what’s left over. That’s the whole assessment.
The arithmetic of an invisible ₹15,000
Take a concrete pair of files.
Applicant A takes home ₹45,000, fully credited to one account on the 1st of each month. Existing obligations: a device instalment of ₹2,200. Using the standard 50% ceiling, the room is ₹22,500, minus ₹2,200 in obligations, leaving ₹20,300 of monthly headroom.
At 15% over 24 months, each ₹1 lakh borrowed costs about ₹4,849 a month. That headroom supports roughly ₹4.18 lakh — comfortably at the top of what a small personal loan is for.
Applicant B earns the same ₹45,000, but ₹30,000 is credited and ₹15,000 arrives in cash. The obligations are identical. Now the assessable income is ₹30,000, the ceiling is ₹15,000, headroom is ₹12,800 — about ₹2.64 lakh.
Same earnings. About ₹1.5 lakh of difference in what can be sanctioned. Not because anyone doubts Applicant B’s ₹15,000 exists. Because there is no document that establishes it, and a lender can only lend against what it can assess. That’s the consumer-protection design working as intended, even when it’s inconvenient — an assessment based on numbers nobody can check is exactly how borrowers end up with EMIs they can’t carry.
Considering a personal loan? Apply for a Securis loan — typical disbursement is 1-2 working days, and you’ll see your exact EMI and total repayment before you commit.
If part of your income is in cash
There are real, unglamorous fixes here. All of them take a little time, which is why it’s worth reading this before you need the money rather than after.
Ask payroll whether bank credit is an option. More employers have moved to bank transfer than most people assume, and in a lot of small firms nobody has ever asked. It costs you one conversation.
If it must stay cash, deposit it — consistently. A cash deposit isn’t the same as a salary credit and I won’t treat it as one. But ₹15,000 deposited around the same date every month for six months is a visible, disciplined pattern, and it materially changes how I read the statement. Erratic deposits of odd amounts don’t do the same work.
Consolidate to one account. Income split across three banks reads as three thin files instead of one strong one. If your salary lands in one account and your EMIs debit from another, put both in the same place before you apply.
Get whatever documentation exists. A salary slip, an appointment letter with the stated CTC, Form 16, an employer letter on letterhead. None of these replace a bank credit on their own, but together with a partial credit they let an underwriter build a fuller picture than the statement alone allows.
Give it three to six months. Almost everything above needs a run of months to become visible. A file built over a quarter looks entirely different from one assembled the week before an application.
Skip this if…
You need the money this week and your income isn’t yet visible. No amount of preparation compresses into seven days. Borrow smaller against the portion that is credited, rather than applying for an amount the statement can’t support and collecting a rejection that sits on your bureau record.
Your income is genuinely irregular, not just partly in cash. Commission-heavy or seasonal earnings paired with a fixed 24-month EMI is an uncomfortable combination whatever the paperwork says. Size the loan against your worst month, not your average one.
You’re a student or not yet salaried. Different route entirely — for education, laptops and course fees, the flow usually runs through a parent as primary applicant, and the assessment sits on their salary rather than yours.
You need ₹5 lakh-plus of tuition paid directly to a college. That’s a bank education loan, not a personal loan. Your bank’s education loan desk is the right first call, regardless of how your own salary arrives.
The short version: lenders don’t reward bank credits and penalise cash out of preference. We assess what’s documented because that’s the only thing we can honestly assess. Make your income visible for a few months before you apply, and the file that reaches me stops undercounting what you actually earn.
If you want a second opinion on your specific situation, WhatsApp us — we’ll be honest about whether Securis fits.