New Credit Union accounts causes hard enquiry and drop in FICO score

[Anonymous]

Due to identity theft of my brother-in-law, I decided to spread my money and opened three new savings accounts in different Credit Unions. Now I have three new hard enquiries on my credit report and my FICO score went down. I did not ask for any credit and CU have rules for pulling hard enquiry for new members. I got a new cell phone last March and the providor also did a hard pull of my credit report. None of these were credit requests per se. FICO scoring formula should distinguish between request for credit (loan, mortgage) and non-credit enquiry by banks and other companies.

[haulingthescoreup]

It would be nice if FICO could make this distinction! unfortunately, I don't think that there's a way of coding this.

CU's do generally pull a hard upon joining, due to their unique set-up, with the $5 share (savings) account. Do any of your new CU's offer credit cards, personal lines of credit, etc? If so, ask if they will consider you for these without pulling an additional hard inquiry. (PenFed is very good about doing this.) If you don't mind picking up some new accounts, this might be useful for you.

Sorry to hear about the ID theft issues. It's always bad, and even worse when it's family.

[RobertEG]

If you look at the fine print attached to almost all applications, they almost always authorizes the creditor to access your CR at the CRAs, whiich is legally your authorization to them under the FCRA to make a hard pull.

Inquires only affect FICO score for one year, although they remain on your CR for two years. If appying for new credit within the next year is not important, then ignore teh inquiries, and take what the new account has to offer.  Inquires are not a biggie.

[Anonymous]

My CU didn't do a hard pull for a savings account - bless them.

[atlastontheroad]

My CU did not do a hard pull for opening accounts back in February.  At joining, I opened a secured Visa which did not result in a hard pull either.  Thanks to having done a lot of reading here, I knew to ask BEFORE opening anything if they would do hard or soft pulls.

Fast forward four months: one pull, two unsecured 5k CCs, a 2k LOC (overdraft but reports as LOC), 12k auto loan.

Had I not read the huge number of posts here praising CUs, I might not have joined.  I'm grateful to have found these fora.

atlast....

[Anonymous]

Wachovia pulls hard inquiry also when you open any account with them. they are listed on mine when I opened a checking and a savings account. Looks like this would not count but it does