What is DPD (days past due)?
How many days an instalment has been overdue.
The count of days since the oldest unpaid instalment fell due. DPD is the single number almost every other asset-quality answer is derived from: the SMA bucket, the move to non-performing, the figure reported to the credit bureaus, and what a diligence pack asks about first.
How is DPD calculated?
From the oldest DEMANDED and unpaid amount, not the oldest accrued one. An amount that has accrued but has not yet fallen due is not overdue, and counting it inflates the whole book. Where a scheme has a grace period for levying a penal charge, that grace does not move the DPD count — the two are separate settings and conflating them delays classification.
DPD: a worked example
An instalment falls due on 5 April and is unpaid. On 30 April the account is at 25 DPD and sits in SMA-1. A part payment on 1 May that does not clear the 5 April instalment in full does not reset the count — DPD runs from the oldest unpaid due date, so it continues to 26.
Why does DPD matter?
Because everything downstream inherits it. If DPD is computed one way for classification and another way for the interest rate or for a renewal check, a lender ends up with two answers to whether the borrower is in arrears, and an inspection will find both.
What the regulations say about DPD
The Reserve Bank's November 2021 clarification requires an account to be flagged overdue in the day-end process for the due date itself. Classification starts on day one; there is no flagging grace.
What a lending system has to do about DPD
One DPD engine serves every product and takes no per-product branch. Products differ by the due events they generate, never by having their own classification path — what silently diverges between two such paths is NPA classification.
Related terms
- Overdue — An amount the lender demanded and the borrower did not pay.
- SMA-0, SMA-1, SMA-2 — Special mention accounts — the stages before NPA.
- NPA (non-performing asset) — An account where payment is overdue beyond the prescribed period.
- IRAC norms — Income recognition, asset classification and provisioning.
- Penal charges — What a lender may levy for a default — as a charge, not as extra interest.
From the people who wrote this
Run your lending on Lenviq
The section above describes what a lending system has to do about this term. Lenviq does it — on every account, computed at day-end, with the direction it comes from recorded against it.
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