Loan Inquiry Events

The Loan Inquiry Events provide visibility into a merchant's prior loan application activity across the Ocrolus network by grouping related Loan Inquiries into distinct credit-seeking episodes.

Instead of treating every application as a separate signal, it help reduce noise from repeated submissions, corrected uploads, broker activity, or multiple uploads tied to the same funding search. This gives underwriters and risk teams a clearer view of how often a merchant has genuinely sought credit.

Loan Inquiry data remains available as the underlying activity to understand loan inquiry events, application velocity, lender activity, and inquiry history. Use them to incorporate behavioral insights directly into credit decisioning, available in both the Dashboard and through the API.

Understanding Loan Inquiry Events

It represents one funding search episode by a merchant.

Nearby or related loan Inquiries are grouped together into a single event to reduce noise from resubmissions, corrected uploads, or broker-driven deal shopping. This helps underwriters understand how many times a merchant has genuinely sought credit, rather than relying only on raw application counts.

A Loan Inquiry Event may include:

Loan Inquiries

The individual Book creation events associated with the merchant.

Lenders

The number of lenders associated with the inquiries in the event.

Event duration

The time between the first and last inquiry included in the event.

Inquiry count

The number of raw Loan Inquiries grouped into the event.

Key concepts

The following terms explain how Ocrolus Intelligence organizes and surfaces merchant credit activity.

  • Loan Inquiry: A Loan Inquiry is a single instance of a merchant's document package, or Book, created on the Ocrolus platform.

    Loan Inquiries are useful for understanding raw application activity, including how many times a merchant has been submitted for review across the network.

  • Loan Inquiry Events: A Loan Inquiry Event is a deduplicated funding search episode. It groups related Loan Inquiries together to help distinguish true credit-seeking behavior from repeated submissions or operational noise.

  • Application Velocity: Application Velocity shows how frequently Loan Inquiries have been submitted for a merchant over time. In the Dashboard, this is shown across defined lookback windows from the Book creation date.

Using Loan Inquiry Event for underwriting

Loan Inquiry Events help underwriters and risk teams:

  • Identify application frequency and recency by understanding how often and how recently a merchant has applied for credit.
  • Detect high-velocity borrowing behavior by spotting merchants with many recent applications or repeated funding episodes.
  • Assess loan inquiry behavior by reviewing how many lenders are associated with a merchant's recent activity.
  • Distinguish repeated submissions from true credit-seeking events by comparing raw Loan Inquiries with deduplicated Loan Inquiry Events.
  • Evaluate merchant history by using the recorded application history as an additional behavioral signal.
  • Streamline review workflows by surfacing behavioral context directly in the Dashboard and API.

Frequent or overlapping applications may indicate credit stress, loan stacking risk, or aggressive borrowing behavior. A longer application history with fewer recent Loan Inquiry Events may indicate a more established merchant with lower recent credit-seeking intensity.

Loan Inquiry Events in the Dashboard

In the Ocrolus Dashboard, Loan Inquiry Events appear within the Ocrolus Intelligence section of a Book.

The section provides a summary of the merchant's application history, inquiry and Loan Inquiry Events velocities, lender activity, and deduplicated credit-seeking events.

Summary metrics

At the top of the section, the Dashboard displays summary metrics that provide a high-level view of the merchant's borrowing activity.

FieldDescription
HistoryThe time span of recorded borrowing activity for the merchant.
Loan Inquiries / Loan Inquiry Events velocityInquiry counts across defined lookback windows from the Book creation date. This can be toggled to Loan Inquiry Event to return counts for the defined lookback period.
Loan Inquiry EventsThe number of times the merchant appears to have actively sought funding in the market.
Number of LendersThe total number of unique lenders associated with the merchant's inquiry history.
Total Loan InquiriesThe total number of merchant applications submitted to Ocrolus for review by lenders.

Use this section to quickly understand the merchant's overall application history, recent activity, and breadth of lender engagement.

Loan Inquiry Events and Loan Inquiries velocity

The Loan Inquiries velocity view shows the number of raw Loan Inquiries associated with the merchant across rolling time windows from the Book creation date.

This section can be switched to display Loan Inquiry Events instead of Loan Inquiries, allowing users to view deduplicated funding activity across the same time windows.

These counts help underwriters assess how recently and frequently a merchant has appeared across the Ocrolus network, whether viewing raw inquiries or deduplicated Loan Inquiry Events.

Loan Inquiry Events list

Below the summary metrics, the Dashboard displays the merchant's Loan Inquiry Events.

Each event represents a deduplicated funding search episode and includes:

FieldDescription
Event numberThe sequence of the Loan Inquiry Events for the merchant.
Start dateThe first inquiry date included in the shopping event.
End dateThe final inquiry date included in the shopping event.
DurationThe length of the event window.
Number of lendersThe number of lenders associated with the event.
InquiriesThe number of raw Loan Inquiries included in the event.

Loan Inquiry Events are displayed in reverse chronological order so that the most recent activity appears first.

Expanding a Loan Inquiry Events

Users can expand a Loan Inquiry Events to review the lenders and Loan Inquiries associated with that event.

Within an expanded event:

  • Inquiries are grouped by lender.
  • Each lender group can be expanded to show the underlying Loan Inquiries.
  • Each inquiry includes its timestamp.
  • Inquiry records are shown in chronological order within each lender group.
  • Only one Loan Inquiry Events is expanded at a time. Expanding a new event collapses the previously expanded event.

This view helps underwriters understand whether a merchant's recent activity is concentrated with one lender or spread across multiple lenders.

Interpreting Loan Inquiry Events

Loan Inquiry Events are designed to make inquiry data easier to interpret.

A high number of raw Loan Inquiries may not always mean that a merchant repeatedly sought new credit. Some inquiries may be caused by repeated uploads, corrected submissions, or broker-driven activity connected to the same funding search.

Loan Inquiry Events help underwriters focus on the number of distinct credit-seeking episodes rather than only raw application counts.

Consider the following signals during review:

SignalPossible interpretation
Many raw Loan Inquiries within one Loan Inquiry EventThe merchant may have had repeated submissions or broad lender engagement within a single funding search.
Multiple Loan Inquiry Events over a short periodThe merchant may be repeatedly seeking funding, which may indicate elevated credit dependency.
Many lenders within one eventThe merchant or broker may be shopping the same deal across multiple lenders.
Short gaps between eventsThe merchant may be returning to the market frequently for additional capital.
Long history with limited recent activityThe merchant may have an established application history without elevated recent borrowing behavior.

Loan Inquiry Events should be reviewed alongside other Ocrolus Intelligence signals, cash flow analytics, bank statement data, and the lender's internal underwriting criteria.

Loan Inquiry Events via API

Loan Inquiry Events and Loan Inquiry data can be retrieved programmatically through the API for use in automated decisioning systems, underwriting workflows, and downstream risk models.

API outputs are intended to stay consistent with the Dashboard, so the same merchant and Book context should produce the same underlying Loan Inquiry and Loan Inquiry Events signals.

For endpoint structure, request parameters, and example responses, see the Loan Inquiry Events API documentation.


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