Below you will find the most comprehensive list of Hard Pull/Soft Pull aka Hard Inquiries/Soft Inquiries on all banks in the United States.
When opening a checking or savings account to take advantage of the higher interest rates or sign-up bonuses, it’s important to know whether to the bank will do a hard pull or a soft pull.
Having too many hard inquiries can negatively affect your credit score with higher interst loan or insurance rates. Therefore it may not be worth opening the checking or savings account.
Based on the reported experiences of the many consumers online from sites such as FicoForums, Slickdeals, CreditBoards, Flyertalk, etc, we’ll put together the most extensive list of Banks(alphabetically) on the type of inquiry they will perform whenever opening a checking or savings account.
Click on Review to read more in-depth explanation for each bank bonus such as direct deposit(full list of what count), account type, expiration date, hard or soft pull, credit card funding, geographical restrictions, additional bonus requirements, and early closure fee. Please help us update our list with your own personal experience by commenting below.
Disclaimer: We make no promise the information below is 100% correct since banks change their way of checking credit often.
Discover Bank was unable to verify a mobile number that was changed from an initial bank account application attempted 9 years previously. Although the earlier application was never accepted or funded, they still considered that application an active account. There was no way to change the i itial associated mobile number to the current mobile number since an account was never established yet it became the mobile number for the applicant’s name. Over 90 minutes on the phone and no resolution, so again the bank account application was terminated by me. I have opened many online bank accounts in under 6 minutes. Discover Bank process is severely flawed and their process is broken.
DOCFCU i.e. Department of Commerce Federal Credit Union does hard pull for every account opened, even if you are an existing member or a joint member who was already scrutinized. The inquiry will stay on your records for 2 years.
confirmation from the representative for Fidelity Cash Management Account : If when you apply for the account and the website cannot automatically verify you, then what will happen is that a soft check will done in the overnight business cycle with Equifax. The check won’t be looking for credit rating it will be looking for things like name and address information to verify.
Zions Bank also rejected me for ChexSystems. I performed online application.
Banco Popular rejected for CHEX
Mr Nguyen we need angels like you in this world. Thankyou!!
Forgot to mention that if Bank of America opens your account (which is easily done by phone), if you have ever had a charge off with them or bad check write off, they will close the account within a few days, possibly without advance notice. This is even if your chexsystems is currently clean. They may also opt to report to chexsystems (again).
The following banks did a soft pull to open a new individual checking, as of October 2016:
Bank of America
Citibank
Ally Bank
TD Bank (second chance bank)
One Nevada Credit Union (second chance bank, also does chexsystems, I believe)
Pacific Western Bank, San Luis Obispo did a pull on my banking app (checking account open request) via Chex Systems.
Mr. Nguyen, thanks so much for updating this super-helpful resource list! Since Alliant Credit Union is a perennial favorite — and has some great rates — I wanted to check in to let everyone know that as of last week, it was performing only soft pulls for new savings, checking, and IRA account applicants who weren’t seeking shared accounts. (In contrast, the website explained, folks who were going to be sharing an account with another person might be open to the additional scrutiny of a hard pull.)
I hope that this information helps someone.
Thanks again for this great article!
I forgot to add that I posted this info about Alliant not to contradict this article, but instead to confirm its take on the current, soft pull state of play at ACU. Cheers!