 TITLE: Will Refinancing My Auto Loan Hurt My Credit? CONTENT: Refinancing a Car Can Temporarily Lower Your Credit Score\n---------------------------------------------------------\nAuto refinancing, just like any type of refinancing, has the potential to affect your credit scores as calculated by the FICO® Score☉ and VantageScore® scoring models. When you apply for loans to shop for the best rate, each lender you apply with will request a credit check that causes a hard inquiry to be entered on your credit report. This typically causes a small reduction in your credit score. If you qualify for and accept a loan offer, you'll typically see another small score dip.\nThe reason for both these score reductions is similar: When borrowers first apply for and take on new debt, they are statistically at greater risk of missing their bill payments. A few months of uninterrupted payments is all that's typically needed for your credit to return to their former levels—or even increase slightly.\nTwo considerations to keep in mind:\n*   If you're shopping around for a loan, multiple hard inquiries will not do cumulative harm to your credit score. The FICO® Score and VantageScore systems are designed to encourage loan shopping and consider applications made within a span of a few weeks as a single event as far as your score is concerned. The score impact of hard inquiries will fall off entirely within a year.\n*   Taking on new debt typically causes your credit score to dip, but because refinancing replaces an existing loan with another of roughly the same amount, its impact on your credit score is minimal.\nWhen refinancing is finalized, your new loan will appear on your credit report, and your payments toward it will be tracked. Your original car loan will remain on your credit report as well, marked \"closed in good standing,\" for up to a decade. END