How To Get A Hard Inquiry Off Your Credit Report?

Hard inquiries may not be as easy to remove from your credit report as soft inquiries, but there are steps you can take to have them removed.

It is an essential part of your credit report that influences your financial life in a significant way. Your credit report is used by lenders to assess your credit risk and therefore whether or not to extend credit to you in the form of credit cards, auto loans, and mortgages among others. The other thing that could lead to a drop in credit scores is when one has many hard inquiries on the credit file. This is a brief on how hard inquiries function as well as information on how to make them vanish.

What is a Hard Credit Check or a ‘Full Access’ Check?

A hard inquiry is requested each time you apply for credit and the credit bureau conducts a check for a new credit application. Some reasons that may lead to hard inquiries include the following: credit card application, auto loan, mortgage application, personal loan application, or joining a utility company. These inquiries can bring down your credit score by a few points, but it is negligible.

It is necessary to note that there are two types of inquiries – hard and soft. Soft inquiry is used when an entity conducts a background check on you but you did not open a new credit with it. Soft inquiry sources include potential employers, insurance companies, or your current creditors, and do not harm your Equifax scores.

Why Remove Them?

Hard inquiries which are usually caused by loan applications only last for one year on credit reports; however, their score effect does not last this long. However, having too many recent hard inquiries means that creditors get a signal that you may be so eager to open new credit accounts. This perceived credit risk causes nearly immaterial declines in your credit scores. A single new inquiry results in a minimal decline, however, multiple hard inquiries can contribute to a significant reduction in the scores.

As hard pulls can reduce the rating, it is useful to get them deleted in case you have applied for credit recently to obtain higher scores. This can benefit your case in situations where you are in the process of securing a loan, for instance, when applying for a mortgage or when seeking the best deal on other loans. Erasing inquiries can also help to lift your score if, for instance, you have been a victim of identity theft, or the inquiries are frivolous.

What are hard inquiries, and how long do they affect your credit score?

Hard inquiries in general remain on your Equifax, Experian, and Trans Union credit report for 12 months although the FICO Scores may be affected for a limited time only. Hard inquiries have long-term effects on your FICO scores that can last up to one year though their impact is reduced over time. Out of all the inquiries, the scores that are badly affected are those that are less than two months old.

Inquiries are removed from your reports after a year automatically. At these stages, they cannot be used as variables in credit scoring models.

Ways to Get Hard Credit Inquiry Wiped Off Credit Report

The best one is it is nearly impossible to get legitimate hard inquiries deleted within that 12 months Window from the credit reports.

Here are the options for eliminating hard inquiries early:

Deleting Credit Mistakes: Dispute Errors with Credit Bureaus

It is recommended that if you discover a hard inquiry from a creditor you did not approach or are not acquainted with, then there are possibilities of identity theft and fraud in the process. The bad credit report can be challenged online or by mail to Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion which provide the query report.

Submit proof it was unauthorized – such as the FTC complaint number or a reference number for a police report. The credit bureau must act to ensure that such an inquiry does not appear in your file if it verifies that it arose from fraud.

One should try challenging the unauthorized hard inquiries as a fraud because it will assist in rectifying the credit status due to inaccurate information. However, if you can’t back your argument with concrete evidence of fraud, the credit bureaus will not remove recent and genuine inquiries that have been made by creditors.

Negotiate for Removal

Credit reporting agencies can disagree with most of the legitimate inquiries on the list but it is not something that they would consider an error and that needs to be corrected; however, you can try contacting the particular creditor that made the hard inquiry and ask them to remove it from the reports.

This saves you time and energy especially if you have a social cordial relationship with the creditor or if you have applied and been declined. Banks may self-observe credit checks to sustain clients’ relations or simply out of courtesy after rejecting applicants. They only need to exclude application-related inquiries regardless of whether they are completed and accepted or rejected.

Ask Nicely

Before writing a letter, dial the new creditor’s customer service number and politely ask them to remove the hard inquiry from the major credit reporting bureaus. This is where you need to be polite as you tell your boss that the removal of the inquiry would benefit you.

Perhaps, the loan application was rejected at one point but you may wish to apply again when you have built a better financial history at a later time. To have the inquiry of your reports is to create the chance that you can reapply with a clean record. If the creditor agrees with your request, the inquiry should drop out in one month and a half to two months.

Submit Goodwill Letter

However, if a confrontation does not lead to the withdrawal of the information, one can employ the last course of action, which is a goodwill removal letter. This written letter should:

Gently ask for the deletion of the hard inquiry from your credit reports

In general, acknowledge submitting the credit application that triggered it

Explain why the inquiry would be best left out or why its removal would serve a significant purpose.

Gentle request regarding goodwill policies of the creditor regarding voluntary removal

When the doctor wants to contact you, you should give him/her your contact information and photocopies of the identification documents.

Be polite and truthful and express interest in a repeating relationship with the creditor in case the need arises in the future.

Check Your Credit Reports

Be sure to do this at least once a month since it takes 30 days for any requests made for your credit reports to be removed. This is the best way, which can help to check whether the inquiries in question have been withdrawn or not. Instead, if the inquiry remains active, you can wait until the inquiry is 12 months old and drops off naturally. After this, one can again apply for credit with that lender, but under different credit terms if one wishes to. It is also recommended that you check your credit report to prevent any new and unwanted inquiries made by third parties.

How Many Hard Inquiries are too many in one year?

Credit score models are aware of the fact that, when looking for large loans, people have to apply to several organizations to compare the rates. Hence each hard credit check reduces the score by a small dint individually, but the overall reduction is regulated after a certain number of credit inquiries within a certain timeframe.

It is advisable to limit hard inquiries to not more than five in any two-week to minimize very low scores. Opt for extending rate shopping for auto, mortgage, or student loans over months if possible to adhere to the FICO 9 model. This affords your scores adequate time to recover before more inquiries are opened on your reports.

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