When shopping around for car finance, customers can be concerned about damaging their credit profile through multiple hard searches. To avoid this happening, and to make it easier for you to shop around, when you first apply for car finance with My Car Credit, we only do a soft search credit check. This allows us to do preliminary background checks to establish your eligibility for car finance. The important thing about soft search is that it doesn’t show on your credit file. This means that they don’t impact on your credit score, and they don’t affect your future chance of securing credit. You can have as many soft searches as you like, and only you can see them on your report. A hard search happens when you have confirmed that you are eligible for car finance, and are happy to proceed with your application. A hard credit check will show on your credit file. It is worth bearing in mind that too many hard credit checks over a short period of time can affect your future ability to secure finance. This is because they tell lenders that you have applied for credit, and therefore may be a higher risk. The great thing about using soft search first is that you can establish your eligibility for car finance before you move ahead with a full search. When you then go on to secure car finance, so long as you keep up your repayments, you may actually improve your credit rating. You can even repair your credit file if it is damaged!