How does opening an account affect my credit file?

When you open a Monzo account, we look at your credit file to see if we can lend you money. This is known as a 'soft search' and will show up on your credit report as a 'quotation search' and 'administration review'. Lenders can't see soft searches though, so this won't affect your chances of borrowing money.

Lenders can see when you open a new bank account though, and this might affect your credit score, but we can't know how. This is because each credit reference agency has their own way of calculating credit scores and certain factors might weigh more negatively/favourably in one credit agency's scorecard over another’s.

For example, opening an account could be good for your credit score if you don't have much credit history, as the agencies know more about you. But if you open lots of accounts in a short space of time, your score might go down because it might look like you want to borrow a lot of money at once.