A credit search occurs when a third party investigates your credit report. They’re looking to see how you manage your credit now, and how you’ve managed it in the past. This search may then be recorded on your credit report for other third parties to see. This is useful to lenders because if you’ve made multiple applications for credit recently, it could suggest to them that you have an urgent need for credit which you may struggle to pay back. In order to offer the best accept rate for customers, the Deko platform may perform up to three searches.
We will always perform a search on behalf of the first lender, who offers the best representative APRs (annual percentage rate of interest). If this lender declines your application we may repeat the process with a second lender, and potentially a third lender as well. These searches could be a combination of ‘soft’ quotation searches (which do not remain on your report) and ‘hard’ credit searches (which do remain on your report). The type of search we perform is dependent upon the lender in question and their instructions to us based on their lending criteria.