What info does a hard pull show?

[Anonymous]

Is a hard pull last reported balance to the CB, or is it a current balance of all accounts as fo the date the report is pulled?

[Walt_K]

It's basically exactly what you see when you pull your report minus the soft pulls.  So last reported balance for all your accounts, as well as any negative information like collections, judgments, etc.

[RobertEG]

Credit reports are generated based on the consumer's credit file as of the date of the inquiry.

A "hard pull" means the inquiry can be shown in credit reportts that the CRA provides to anyone having a permissible purpose.

The only types of inquiries having permissible purpose that cannot be shown in credit reports available to those other than the consumer are the "promotional inquiries" that entitle the inquiree to only the names and addresses of those who meet the firm offer for credit criteria provided to the CRA.

So, what a party can see with a hard pull is theoretically anything in your credit file.

However, each vendor of credit reports picks and chooses which items of information they wish to include in their credit reports. No credit report shows an entire consumer's credit file.  A common example is the reported DOFD for any reported collections or charge-offs, which are required to be in a consumer's file within 90 days after reporting of a collection or charge-off, but is commonly not included in most commerical credit reports.

A second example, more pertinent to the posted question, is prior balance history.  Monthly prior balances are retained in a consumer's credit file, but are routinely not shown in most commercial credit reports.  Creditors may have access to specialty reports that show such information.

An extreme example would be an inquiry made by a creditor for which the consumer is requesting credit in the amount of $150K or more, for which the creditor can request a "full-file" credit report that additionally includes any and all prior derogs, including those that have normally become excluded based on expiration of the normal credit report excludion period.  That would include prior collections that have passed their normal exclusion period of 7 years plus 180 days from DOFD.

[TheConductor]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Is a hard pull last reported balance to the CB, or is it a current balance of all accounts as fo the date the report is pulled?

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The above is correct, but to specifically address your question about balances, it is the last reported balance. 

Your balance on the credit report only gets updated when the creditor reports it to them.  Typically that is only once a month. So if your balance changes after it reports, it will not change what shows on your credit report until the next time the creditor sends an update.  This is true of hard pulls and soft pulls alike.

The credit bureau can only report the information they are given....they do not have a pipeline into the creditor's data.

[RobertEG]

+1

However, last or current balance is not the only balance information retained in consumer credit files.

There are codes for retention of monthly balances that go back appox 24 months, and a more complete credit report could show not only the current balance on an account, but also its balance history.  That might be of interest to certain creditors.

Again, it is dependent upon how comprehensive the commerical credit report might be.