Soft Inquiry

Categories: Regulations

Think: good cop/bad cop. A hard inquiry involves getting out the bright lights (and maybe the rubber hose and the phone book). The light inquiry involves getting the suspect their favorite snack and trying to trick them into giving up information.

Only here, we're not talking interrogations. We're talking about credit inquiries.

A hard inquiry involves a lender who is seriously thinking about giving you a loan. They need to know about your credit history. So they review a copy of your credit report.

Soft inquiries are more informal. You check your own credit report because you're bored on a Saturday afternoon. An employer checks as part of their hiring due diligence. A credit card company checks as part of a pre-approval for an offer they plan to give you.

The main difference: hard inquiries show up on your credit report...soft inquiries don't. The hard inquiries represent a serious attempt on your part to get a loan. You are looking to borrow money, which impacts your credit score. The soft inquiries don't involve a direct attempt on your part to get money. Therefore, they don't count against you on your credit score.

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Finance: What is Adverse Audit Opinion?27 Views

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Finance a la shmoop. What is an adverse audit opinion and you know deficiency

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letter. Okay people this is not good you thought you had good grades but when [Report card is thrown onto the desk]

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you got your report card your teachers had opinions adverse to yours... [Report card has bad grades in it]

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They sent your parents a deficiency letter you know the one with all those [Mom looks shocked]

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D's on it well when it's a company's audit that has similarly gone awry it's [Boss looks angry and employee looks shocked]

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the nice way to say it well then it means they didn't count the beans

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properly when they gave their financial reports to their investors or whoever

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the auditors were serving usually this implies that companies overstated how [Employee counting coffee beans]

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profitable they really were or how well they were really doing so tens of

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thousands of investors if you know the company was public when this all [Big line of people waiting to invest]

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happened paid twenty seven dollars and 32 cents a share when with the real

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numbers the stock probably should have been trading more at like you know

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fourteen dollars and 27 cents a share big difference well basically an auditor

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is saying that yours are not bread-and-butter misstatements no oops [Bean report with the numbers crossed out]

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it's more of a dude there were material ie important

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mistakes and they were pervasive like everywhere math, science, english, history

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your failure it's no mystery that's how auditors talk really

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all right well then there are massive losses to massive numbers of people who hire [Protesters on a street]

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massive numbers of lawyers who sue you.. massively.. in the world of finance an

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adverse audit opinion is a bit like running over everyone's favorite dog [Car goes over a bump]

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several times only you're the one who is likely dead meat [Guy reverses and runs the dog over again and the owner comes to fight]

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