Credit investigation refers to collecting, sorting, saving and processing the credit information of natural persons, legal persons and other organizations according to law, providing credit reports, credit evaluation, credit information consultation and other services to help customers judge and control credit risks and carry out credit management activities. From Zuo Gong's Eight Years, "A gentleman keeps his word and has a levy, so his resentment is far greater than his body". Among them, "collecting by faith" means that you can verify the credibility of your words, or you can collect and verify credit. The emergence of credit investigation activities stems from the emergence and development of credit transactions. Credit is a special form of value movement based on repayment, including currency lending and commodity credit sales, such as bank credit and commercial credit. Modern economy is a credit economy, and credit, as a specific economic transaction, is the product of the development of commodity economy to a certain stage. The essence of credit is a creditor-debtor relationship, that is, the lender (creditor) believes that the trustee (debtor) has the repayment ability and agrees to the promise of future repayment made by the trustee. However, when the commodity economy is highly developed and the scope of credit transactions is increasingly extensive, especially when credit transactions spread to the whole country and even the whole world, it will be extremely difficult for one party to know the credit status of the other party.
At this time, understanding the credit status of market participants has become a demand, and credit investigation activities have also emerged. It can be seen that credit investigation is actually produced and developed with the emergence and development of commodity economy, and it is a credit information service provided for credit activities. Credit information can restrain the behavior of enterprises and individuals from the system, which is conducive to the formation of a good social credit environment. China has advocated the virtue of honesty and trustworthiness since ancient times, and promoted the formation of the concept of honesty through moral criticism. Honesty is a kind of social morality and a basic principle of communication with people. Honesty and trustworthiness are indispensable virtues for enterprises and individuals. Shanxi merchants and Huizhou merchants, who once dominated China's commerce for hundreds of years, were able to rise to the peak, one of which was to establish the business philosophy of "honesty-oriented".