An inquiry occurs any time an individual or business requests a copy of a person’s consumer report – also known as a credit report. The bureaus keep a record of all inquiries made. Creditors and scoring models could consider inquiries a negative factor in a consumer’s report. On a soft inquiry, the inquiry is only visible to the consumer if requesting a copy of their own consumer report, whereas a hard inquiry can be seen by other credit reporting agencies. Because select scores are built using the data from consumer reports, a soft inquiry should not be seen by scoring algorithms and should not impact credit scores.