Quick clarification question on Hard/Soft inquiries
 

I understand that hard inquiries result from my request/applications for new credit and such, and soft inquiries come from the rest.

I also have learned that when my existing lenders check my credit files it also goes under the soft inquiry category under "account review." or something like that.

My question is,

1. From the personal credit reports from the major agencies, how do I count the number of HARD inquiries (and soft inquiries?) Experian report only shows "requests viewed by others" and "requests viewed by you".

2. Say I requested my bank for a credit limit increase. Do they pull a new Hard inquiry or a soft one? (does this come under the "account review" soft pull?)

Thanks!

1. Requests viewed by others are hard pulls, and requests viewed by you are soft ones.

2. It depends. If you press a button and get an instant CLI, it's usually free of any pull. If you have to fill a form and provide some personal information, it's probabally gonna be a hard one, with the exception of MBNA, with which you always have to fill a form for CLI requests and get only a soft pull since recently.

Also keep in mind that opening certain type of banking products other than credit lines also generate hard pulls. Citibank is notorious for pulling one hard inquiry for opening every single transactional account however many accounts you have with them already. You have to rely on other people's experience and there is no sure way to know if you'll get a hard pull by opening an account until afterwards, not even by asking CSRs because sometimes they either lie or don't know.

Experian report shows virtually all credit card inquiries except MBNA, soft pulls
 

Only MBNA shows up on the View by Others on my Experian report - one was from when we opened bank accounts with Wachovia and the overdraft protection was in the form of a credit card - no other choice - the credit card was managed by MBNA - and that was 1 inquiry.

The other inquiry was also from MBNA - this time it was a Schwab credit card I applied and got instant approval. (no foreign currency conversion fee).

All other inquiries from Chase, Citi, BankofA, were under View by You - so based on the above explanation, they are all soft inquiries.

Those may well be account review inquiries. It could be that when you opened those accounts, they pulled EQ or TU instead. It could also be that they were opened more than 2 years ago (hard inquiries only remain on record for 2 years).

It looks the inquiries on EQ are hard inquiries but they are soft on EX.

This is incorrect. In the vast majority of cases, when you apply for a new account, the inquiry conducted for the purpose of processing that application is a hard inquiry. This is true of the vast majority of lenders - Citi, Chase, American Express, MBNA, and so on. Inquiries conducted after the account is open (so-called "account review") are soft inquiries.

Hard inquiries are recorded so that other lenders can be aware of a possible large amount of new credit being acquired in a short period of time. FICO can take points off for excessive hard inquiries.

It's actually fairly simple. Not much reason for speculation.
Inquiries will always differ across bureaus because they are specific to the bureau. e.g. MBNA may pull your TU credit file in processing an application. In this case, TU will show a hard inquiry from MBNA. If MBNA did not choose to pull Experian, then Experian will not show an inquiry. (Very few lenders pull all 3 bureau reports for the same application.)

This is not a flaw; it's by design. The inquiries are a record of the disclosure of the file for a specific purpose, and are not meant to be an exhaustive list of accounts for which you may have applied.

Let me clarify, all the Experian inquiries falling View by You
 

I cannot tell what type of Inquiries on the EQ report.

EX, EQ and TU do not decide how to designate an inquiry. The creditor designates the type of inquiry at the time it is made.

Many lenders will pull account review inquiries immediately after an account is opened, or a week afterward, or two weeks, or all of the above. Amex, especially, is known for a large number of soft pulls.

However, I stand by my statement that in the majority of cases, there is one hard pull - on one of the three bureaus - per new application. Sometimes two. (AFAIK, Capital One is notorious for pulling all three, but virtually no other banks will.) However, it's also known to happen that some banks don't pull again if they already have a recent report on file, according to their own criteria.

However, to state that lenders other than MBNA simply do not pull hard inquiries is misleading advice, and will not be true for the vast majority of people.

Usually inquiries shown to credit monitoring services are hard inquiries, so the EQ inquiries you're seeing may well be hard. (It depends on the specific service you're using, though.)

I suppose one out of 3 credit bureaus would be the main one the lenders use for your geographic location and most likely those inquiries made on that chosen service would be "hard inquiries".

As I mentioned, this is consistent with many issuers doing account reviews soon after a new account is opened.
This has been my experience as well, though others have reported differently. Clearly policies on this vary from bank to bank and customer to customer.
And what I am saying is that you cannot be sure there was no hard pull from any other creditor until you look at all 3 bureau reports, because inquiries are recorded separately on all 3 reports.
If these were promotional pulls (PRM), they would be soft, in which case FICO would not take them into account. Also, most reports suggest that a few hard inquiries do not hurt FICO, but rather only inquiries above a certain (unknown, because FICO is proprietary) threshold.
Once again, your assumption is incorrect. An inquiry is a record of a specific disclosure of the specific bureau file. A creditor can and does pull one file without necessarily pulling another. If Citibank does a hard pull on Equifax for the purpose of processing a new application, they have not necessarily pulled EX or TU at the same time, so one would not necessarily expect to see an EX or TU inquiry on the same date. (This is notwithstanding the fact that they will report the account itself, once opened, with all 3 bureaus.)

As far as personal experiences go, I have applied with Citi, Chase, American Express, Juniper, Discover and GEMB. In all cases, the inquiries were hard, but they were spread across the bureaus - GEMB and Citi pulled EQ, Amex and Discover pulled TU, and Juniper and Chase pulled EX. That means when I look at my EX report, there are hard inquiries from Juniper and Chase, and not the others. They're not supposed to "match up" across the bureaus; rather, they are an actual record, kept separately by each bureau, of who has viewed that report and for what purpose.

those inquiries are done before issuance of cards.

If the account is approved immediately, then there could be an immediate account review, since as far as the bank is concerned, the account is open the same day. I have seen this, for example, with Juniper (did an account review pull on TU the same day I was approved).

http://www.myfico.com/CreditEducatio...Inquiries.aspx
"Inquiries are a subset of the "new credit" category shown above, which accounts for 10% of the total FICO score. Their importance depends on the overall information in your credit report. For some people, a given factor may be more important than for someone else with a different credit history. In addition, as the information in your credit report changes, so does the importance of any factor in determining your score. What's important is the mix of information, which varies from person to person, and for any one person over time."

Timeline !
 

Nope. The inquiries ranging from 1 to 8 biz days BEFORE the cards are issued.

Right, I have noticed this glitch too. It seems if you call the CS number on the card, then press option 3 in the automated system, then option 3, it will tell you the correct date. After the first statement cuts, the website will then display future statement dates correctly.

The pattern of doing soft inquiries before the account is opened (ordinarily a soft inquiry from an existing creditor is called an "account review" inquiry, which is why I kept using the term, though it's not correct in your case) is new to me - have not seen it happen with Citi or Chase. Very interesting.

Is it possible that you are still keeping some accounts with Citi or Chase open even while churning others, and the soft pulls relate to those accounts?

I would also be curious to know whether they did a hard pull on EQ or TU. Citi almost always seems to pull EQ for me, once EQ and TU. Never EX for a new account (but often for account reviews). Chase always pulls EX for me as "FIRST USA,NA". If there is a way to apply for new accounts with no hard pull at all, that would be very interesting to know. :)