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Hard pull inquiries occur when you applied for new credit or when you authorized a financial institution to request your credit report for granting you a loan. Hard pull inquiries can affect your credit score. Usually banks do not want their clients to have more than 4 inquiries annually. If for some reason there are more than 4 inquiries in a consumer's credit report it is a "high risk" for banks to grant a credit or to approve a loan application. They "think" that consumer excessively is looking for credit. So numerous inquiries not only could lower your credit score but to put you on alert. Remember every time financial institution places a hard pull inquiry in credit report they have to be authorized in writing by consumers. Otherwise it is illegal to place a hard inquiry on a consumer's credit report without written permission.

Soft pull inquiries occur when you pull your own credit report using online specific sources. There is always a way to check with online credit report provider websites if the inquiry would be hard or soft while you request your credit report. Soft inquiries can be placed by financial institutions for promotional credit offer purposes. Also existing creditor can access your credit reports using soft inquiries for credit line increase or decrease purposes. Soft inquiries do not affect on credit scores and only consumer can see soft inquiries while pulling credit report using soft inquiry version credit report websites.