Before offering you a mortgage, lenders do a credit search to decide if they want to lend you money. They’ll do a credit check to get a clear understanding of your financial history.
Lenders will usually have a reason for doing a credit check on you. For example, you’ve applied for a mortgage with them. But you can get credit checked for other things too, like if you apply for a credit card or a store credit card.
Lenders differ in the way they conduct credit checks, but most will look for any past behaviour that could suggest you won’t pay your mortgage repayments on time.
There’s two types of credit check. A soft check, and a hard check.
A hard check is where a lender looks at the details of your credit history, and the check shows up on your credit file so it’s visible to anyone who checks your credit file. Too many hard checks in a short space of time can look concerning to lenders because they think you’ve got a lot of other financial commitments.
A soft check is a lighter version of a hard check – just a brief look at your credit file. A soft check doesn’t show up on your file. When you check your own, that’s not visible to anyone else.