Most people applying for a personal loan think the decision hangs on their credit score. It matters — but if I had to pick the one document that decides a salaried application at Securis, it’s the bank statement. Six months of it, from the account your salary lands in.

The score tells us how you’ve handled credit in the past. The statement tells us what your money actually does every month, right now. Those are different questions, and the second one is the one that predicts whether an EMI will clear on the 5th.

I want to walk through what an underwriter actually looks at in those six months, because almost nobody applying knows — and several of the things that get files declined are fixable in four to eight weeks.

The four things we read in your statement

One: is the salary credited, and is it regular? We look for a recognisable salary credit landing on roughly the same date each month, from the same source. Same date, same range, six months running — that’s the base case, and it does more for an application than a strong CTC on paper. If your salary arrives partly by transfer and partly in cash, only the credited portion is assessable. That isn’t a judgement about how you’re paid; it’s that we can only underwrite income we can see. If you’re paid ₹65,000 and ₹40,000 of it is credited, we’re building the file on ₹40,000.

Two: what your obligations actually are. Every recurring debit that looks like a loan EMI, a card payment or an SIP-style commitment gets pulled out and added up. This is where FOIR — your fixed-obligation-to-income ratio — comes from. Take-home ₹55,000 with ₹9,000 of existing EMIs puts you at about 16% before the new loan. At a 50% ceiling, you have roughly ₹18,500 of monthly headroom to work with.

Worth saying clearly, because it worries people unnecessarily: having existing obligations is not a problem in itself. If you’re applying to consolidate debt, you are supposed to have existing obligations — that’s the reason for the loan. What we’re checking is whether the new EMI fits alongside what stays, or replaces it.

Three: bounce history. A returned mandate or a failed auto-debit is the strongest negative signal in the whole file, and it’s weighted more heavily than a slightly lower score. One bounce eight months ago with clean months since is usually explainable. Three in the last six months is a different conversation. If a mandate has bounced recently, the single most useful thing you can do is wait out a clean three-month run before applying.

Four: the closing-balance pattern. Not the average balance — the shape. If the account is near zero from the 8th of every month onwards, that tells us the EMI has nowhere to sit even if the FOIR arithmetic technically works. An account that holds a small buffer through the month reads very differently from one that runs flat, at the same income.

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.

What that headroom is actually worth

Back to the ₹18,500 of monthly headroom. Here’s where most applicants leave money on the table in one direction or the other.

At 15% over 24 months, each ₹1 lakh of loan costs about ₹4,849 a month. So ₹18,500 of headroom supports roughly ₹3.8 lakh — an EMI of about ₹18,425, total repayment about ₹4,42,200, interest about ₹62,200.

Stretch the same headroom to 36 months and each ₹1 lakh costs about ₹3,467 a month. Now the same ₹18,500 supports well past ₹5 lakh — so you’d hit our ceiling first. Take the full ₹5 lakh over 36 months: EMI about ₹17,333, total repayment about ₹6,23,976, interest about ₹1,24,000.

Look at those two lines together. The monthly number barely moved — ₹18,425 versus ₹17,333. The interest doubled, from ₹62,200 to ₹1,24,000. A longer tenure feels like relief and is priced like a loan.

My honest advice, and it’s the same advice I’d give a friend: borrow against the shortest tenure your headroom will carry, not the largest amount your headroom will unlock. The eligibility number a lender shows you is a ceiling, not a recommendation.

And borrow for what you actually need. If the requirement is ₹2.5 lakh, take ₹2.5 lakh. There’s no prize for using the full sanction, and the interest on the unused portion is real money.

What to fix before you apply

If you’re four to eight weeks away from applying, these are the levers that genuinely move a file:

  • Route your salary through one account and keep it there. Splitting income across accounts makes a strong earner look like a weak one on paper.
  • Clear a small EMI if you’re close to the line. Closing a ₹2,500 obligation frees ₹2,500 of headroom — that’s about ₹50,000 of extra eligibility at 24 months.
  • Get a clean run of auto-debits. Three consecutive months without a bounce, with a buffer sitting in the account on mandate dates.
  • Don’t apply to several lenders in the same fortnight. Each application is a hard enquiry, and a cluster of them reads as distress even when it’s just comparison shopping.
  • Keep the statement in the right format. A bank-generated PDF for the full six months, not screenshots and not a partial export.

Skip this if…

Your income is genuinely irregular. If you’re commission-heavy, on a variable payout, or between roles, a fixed EMI on a 24-month tenure is a hard commitment. Borrow smaller, or wait for a stable quarter.

You need funds disbursed to a college for tuition. For ₹5 lakh-plus of fees paid directly to an institution, a bank education loan is the correct product — a personal loan isn’t, regardless of how good your statement looks. Your bank’s education loan desk is the right first call.

The EMI only fits if nothing goes wrong. If the number works only assuming no medical expense, no travel, no bad month — it doesn’t work. Size the loan so an ordinary bad month doesn’t turn into a bounce.

One last point. Nothing above is a trick to game an underwriter. It’s the same list an honest lender uses to decide whether an EMI will clear — which is also, not coincidentally, the list you’d want to check before taking on a two-year commitment of your own.

If you want a second opinion on your specific situation, WhatsApp us — we’ll be honest about whether Securis fits.