What's visibly different from SP to HP?

[iv]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Can a creditor see with a soft pull exact payment dates and amounts?  I know looking at reports from CK or CCT (maybe other monitoring services, too?) all you can see from month to month is the green "OK" if the payment was received on time or the delinquency.  I know from obtaining my full credit reports that I can see dates and amounts which is something I don't see from monitoring services.  I'm wondering if this is one of the differences between a SP and a HP.  Does anyone know?  Overall, it's not really a significant difference as it doesn't really matter much in the grand scheme of things.

I guess what I don't understand, if there is really no difference between a SP and HP (in terms of what's visible to the person looking) why some lenders have the protocol to do a HP for a current customer that's seeking a CLI.  A CLI is not a request for "new credit" - I get it that it's a request for "more" credit, but that decision can certainly be made with the same information that's available from a SP.  This, to me, is a bit puzzling.

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There are multiple types of "SP" - the promotional type provides very little info (basically that you match a criteria list, and your name/address).

But the type of "SP" pulled for a CLI or other SP credit request provides the complete file, same as you can pull directly from the CRA (just without the list of SPs that only you can see).

For that matter, a credit-monitoring site like CK could certainly choose to provide the same full info - some choose to display very little beyond a score, others provide close to a full report. (Although the trigger-based monitoring appears to not provide the same info as the full pulls.)

As for lenders choosing to use a HP vs a SP?  There is absolutely no difference in the data they receive.

The difference is effectively in the data they provide to other lenders.

A HP is a message to other lenders that you have requested credit.

By choosing to use either a HP or a SP, the lender is choosing to either "help" other lenders by providing additional data on you, or ...not. (And in some cases, they are just using a previous SP AR pull, and it would cost them additional money to do a new pull, HP or SP.)

The fact that all lenders look at HP history, but not all lenders provide "full" HP data is, from the lenders' points of view, a "tragedy of the commons" kind of problem.  From a well-informed borrower's point of view, it can, of course, be useful.

[takeshi74]

Be careful relying on what you've seen.  There are plenty of creditors that require HP's for CLI's.

HP's generally have a small impact anyway.  If one is seeing a bigger impact from HP's then the HP's aren't the real problem.