In early July 2026, officials from Poland's Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK), acting with court approval and accompanied by police, entered the offices of the Credit Information Bureau (BIK), ING Bank Śląski, mBank, and mBank Hipoteczny. The reason: suspicion that the way credit inquiries were counted when assessing creditworthiness may have discouraged customers from comparing offers and limited competition between banks for years. It is one of the more serious cases UOKiK is currently pursuing in the financial sector, and it concerns almost anyone who has ever applied for a loan.
What actually happened
The searches at BIK, ING Bank Śląski, mBank, and mBank Hipoteczny took place in early July, just as part of the banking sector workforce was starting summer holidays. UOKiK officials acted with court approval and police assistance — a sign that the case is being treated seriously rather than as a routine inspection. The underlying investigation, however, has actually been running since February 2025, and the searches mark a more decisive stage of evidence gathering.
The regulator is examining whether the rules governing information exchange between banks and BIK — including the transfer of data on the number of credit inquiries — were genuinely necessary to assess whether a customer could repay a multi-year obligation, or whether they instead served another purpose: making it harder for customers to compare offers and switch to a competitor. If the practices are found to have limited competition, both the banks and BIK face substantial financial penalties.
Why "shopping around" used to hurt your score
The mechanism at the heart of the case is simple, even though few people realized it was happening. Every loan application submitted — even one where the customer was merely checking terms and ultimately did not sign a contract — was recorded in the BIK database as a credit inquiry. The next bank a customer applied to would see several such inquiries from recent weeks in the customer's history.
In practice, this could play out as follows: a credit analyst seeing five inquiries within a month would interpret it as a warning sign — "this customer is desperately seeking financing, they might be in financial trouble" — rather than the simpler and far more likely explanation: the customer was simply comparing offers from several banks to find the cheapest personal loan or the most favourable mortgage. The result was that sensible consumer behaviour — checking several proposals before making a decision — could lower a customer's score and make it harder to get credit on good terms.
What changed on 1 July 2026
Even before the searches took place, BIK had already begun changing its rules — apparently under pressure from the ongoing UOKiK investigation. Since 1 July 2026, credit inquiries that did not result in a signed loan agreement are automatically deleted from the database after 14 days and are no longer passed on to subsequent banks reviewing an application. In other words, if you check an offer at several banks within a short window of time, that fact will no longer weigh on your history for months afterwards.
At the same time, BIK is rolling out a new scoring model designed to reflect a customer's actual financial situation more broadly — the level of existing debt, the number of dependants, and obligations outside the banking sector, such as non-bank loans or deferred payments (BNPL). This represents a meaningful shift in philosophy: instead of penalising the act of inquiring itself, the system now assesses genuine repayment capacity.
What this means for your finances
For the average bank customer, this change has very concrete practical consequences. If you are planning a personal loan or a mortgage, you may until now have avoided checking several offers at once, worried that every additional application would make you look worse to the next bank in line. After the changes, that risk is significantly smaller, at least in the longer run — old inquiries simply disappear from analysts' view.
That does not mean it is now wise to file applications with ten banks at once. The smarter strategy remains to compare terms — interest rate, APR, commission and additional costs — before submitting a formal application at all. Comparing offers in one place lets you narrow your choice down to two or three genuinely attractive options, rather than testing every bank in turn and leaving a trail in your credit history regardless.
It is also worth remembering that a good credit score is not just about avoiding negative entries — it is also about building savings. Regularly setting aside part of your income into a term deposit signals financial stability to a bank, which can offset any credit inquiries recorded at BIK.
What to watch out for despite the changes
The UOKiK investigation is not yet over, which means a few things are worth keeping in mind. First, BIK's rule change is a response to regulatory pressure, not a final resolution of the case — further changes are possible, and even financial penalties for the institutions involved, should UOKiK confirm the violations. Second, 14 days is still a defined time window — if you submit several loan applications more than two weeks apart, the protective mechanism will not fully cover you.
Third, the new, broader scoring model, which takes into account more data on debt and non-bank obligations, could mean either a better or a worse score than before for different customers, depending on their individual financial situation. Rather than assuming things can only get better, it is worth checking your own BIK report and realistically assessing what terms a bank is likely to offer you.
Summary — what you should do
- Check offers from several banks within a short window — since July 2026, this should no longer permanently weigh on your BIK history.
- Before submitting a formal application, compare terms across several offers so you can limit the number of real inquiries to the banks you are genuinely interested in.
- Check your own BIK report before applying, to understand how the new scoring model assesses your situation.
- Build a financial cushion — regular contributions to a savings account strengthen your financial profile regardless of scoring changes.
- Keep an eye on how the UOKiK investigation develops — if the regulator confirms violations, further rule changes in consumers' favour are possible.
The changes at BIK are good news for anyone who wants to make thoughtful financial decisions rather than fear that simply checking an offer will damage their credit history. Instead of guessing which proposal is best, compare current mortgage or personal loan offers in one place and choose the product that fits your situation.