I recently got denied to open a checking account and in their letter, I found that my Chexsystems score is <200 (out of 899). I was opening some checking accounts recently. I checked my Chexsystems report and it has only two sections including an address change (in the last year) and inquiries (8 inquiries by others, 2 inquiries by me, all inquiries are in the past 8 months). There was no negative info.
Anyway, a 200 score looks very low and not sure what hurts it too much. Does the chexsystems score have only inquiries component? If not, what are the other components? How many months/years are needed to do gardening to recover this score (the inquiries seem to drop after ~3-5y)?
I have checking/CC accounts with major banks and not sure whether I need my chexsystems score for any purpose any time soon. It looks like this score gets used to open checking/saving accounts only and should not impact typical CC/loan/brokerage applications (exception: some CUs also use it for membership application and they open a saving account to keep the membership fee).
Fico8: EX~EQ~TU~810 (12 month goal~840).Sometimes, due to fraud alert on my file, I applied for checking online and they referred me to branch. The branch said they need to re-run the application and this resulted two inquiries on my chex. Is it feasible to negotiate to remove the excess chex inquiry? Does anyone have such experiences?
I see 2x inquiries by two insitituions and 3x by one. Among these, one inquiry seems to be excess and it happened one month after opening checking/membership account with a CU (needs follow-up).
The lessons get learned hardly and from now, I will keep the chex locked for ~4-5 years (gardening).
Hard to get Chex INQ's removed. you should have been told the factors for a low score.
Did you review the information for correctness (assume you did). As you say, it seems low. Some of us on here that have not caused any transactions to hit Chex System have found no score or something like 999 ... can't quite remember. Supposedly it was not suppose to be a problem but I have been questioned on it?! 
All info look correct in the report. I will call Chex to talk to the rep, after the holidays, to see why the score is too low and the possible ways and the required gardening time to recover it (4 inq/2m might triggered a high risk).
It is interesting that the report has a section called "inquiries viewed only by you" and I see two inquiries by Affinity there. As the report says, these two inquiries can be viewed by me only and would not get included to others (my impression is that they might be SP on Chex!, not sure whether they impact Chex score). Not sure why Affinity contines watching chex report of customers, while already having business relationship (checking/CC). It bothers me to keep my Chex locked almost forever.
I received my Chex score from Chexsystems and it was 620, which looks more reasonable. Anyway, a few recent inquiries highly drop chex score.
Based on Chexsystems letter, Schwab has its own internal algo and its score should not necessarily match chexsystems score (they reported ~200).
Sadly 620 is considered Low. For example BECU told me the cutoff was 650 last year when they denied my initial application, forcing ne to wait about 6 months.
The only way to heal chex is with time and to stop opening accounts. 3-6 months, closer to 6 will likely be key. Most places that run chex do not want to see more than 2 inquiries in that period, and from experience, 3 or more will tank the score just enough to miss the cutoff.
Purely based on my experience. I just got denied UnifyFCU solely for chex inquiries.
