How Do Soft Inquiries Affect My Credit Score Over Time?

[catherinebennett]

Hello

When checking my credit reports; I noticed multiple soft inquiries from various financial institutions and credit monitoring services. While I understand that soft inquiries don’t directly impact my credit score; I’m curious whether a high number of them over time could have any indirect effects on lenders' decisions or creditworthiness.

For example; do mortgage lenders or credit card companies take soft inquiries into account when manually reviewing applications? Could frequent soft pulls from pre-approved offers or personal credit checks create a red flag for certain types of loans? Additionally, does the FICO scoring model consider soft inquiries in any indirect way? 

If anyone has experience with this or knows of official FICO guidelines regarding soft inquiry patterns, I’d appreciate some insights!

Thank you !!

[CreditCuriosity]

No one can see SP inquries other than yourself.  No impact

[GZG]

^^^ 

soft inquires cannot in anyway impact your score

the act of using a lender's pre-qualification tool can impact underwriting with that lender itself 

so if you pre-qualify for a synchrony card 3 times a day for a month, they are allowed to use that behavior pattern in their underwriting (they think it's suspicious, they literally have a denial reason code for it) 

so while the SP didn't impact score at all, it can impact underwriting with the lender if you're going out of the way to do excessive attempts with a pre-qualification tool

but if companies are the ones doing the soft pulls and this isn't you using soft pull prequalification tools, this won't impact you at all

[jcar]

Soft inquiries do not affect your credit scores. Only hard inquiries do. 

[Thomas_Thumb]

No Fico or VantageScore model considers SPs in scoring.

A majority of SPs come from existing creditors doing monthly check ups and potential solicitors not related to credit seeking behavior. Furthermore, SPs are only viewable on your CRA reports by you - not existing or potential future creditors.

[Kolin]

Soft inquiries don’t impact your FICO score at all, so you don’t need to worry about them in that sense. However, some lenders manually review reports, and if they see a lot of soft pulls from pre-approved offers or credit checks, they might assume you’re actively shopping for credit. This usually isn’t a dealbreaker, but it could be a factor for certain loans, like mortgages. If you’re looking for financing, it might help to check offers where lenders already consider your overall profile.