Can anyone join a CU?

[bearsfan34]

I know they HP but if you are rebuilding your credit should you wait? Do CUs ever deny membership because of lates, collections etc? Thinking about joining but I don't want to risk the HP for nothing.

[Anonymous]

I'm not a CU specialist by any means, but I'd imagine that depends on the actual credit union in question. Do they have a local branch available? If so, I'd recommend going there and talking to someone about opening a new account, and just be upfront about having negatives on your credit history and being concerned about being denied becasue of it. If they say it's going to be a problem, at least you'll have saved yourself a HP.

[vish1]

Not all CUs HP, many of them just pull your chex systems report. Ask the CU you are looking to apply at if they HP or not. You may have more than 1 CU around you and the odds are that some of them dont HP.

[tsquad131]

my gf has lots of collections and lates and they approved her for membership, the cu rep told me when he was filling out her information was that if she had bad check activity and she did have an overdrawn checking account that was sent to collections also. If your only trying to open a checking/savings then you should be good, credit products is a different story, they also hp her experian report and it said on the sign on his desk that new member applications will be verified and checked through experian.

[Anonymous]

We have worked quite a bit with two local CU's. 

One has been far more difficult to get approval for checking/savings and other products.  The other has been much more lenient, and also more generous in CL's on credit products. 

As others mentioned, it seems like each CU has its own personality.

I'm a big fan of walking in and talking to a rep.  If you have a copy of your credit report, they may be willing to look it over and give you a heads-up on what to expect.  They'll still have to do a HP (if that's their policy) to open accounts.

[haulingthescoreup]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I'm not a CU specialist by any means, but I'd imagine that depends on the actual credit union in question. Do they have a local branch available? If so, I'd recommend going there and talking to someone about opening a new account, and just be upfront about having negatives on your credit history and being concerned about being denied becasue of it. If they say it's going to be a problem, at least you'll have saved yourself a HP.

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+1

One thing that you can do is pull your EQ FICO report from here, print it out, and visit local CU's. Show it to a loan officer and ask if they think that you'd qualify for membership and any credit products.

Be sure to tell them that it's a Beacon 5.0 score (industry name for the Equifax FICO score you get here.) Many CU's pull Equifax, although certainly not all.

Tell them that you're not authorizing a hard pull yet --in other words, you're not applying --and that you realize that there will be a hard inq if and when you DO apply.

This might save you some declines, and it will also let you get to know your local options.