Beacon Federal

A minor inconvenience is that one is limited to 5 external links to/from the RCA and these links can only be set up through a paper form.  The form must be returned by mail or in person, along with a check or deposit slip of the target account and evidence that you own the target account (for example:  a copy of an account statement).  The trial deposits method would be far less cumbersome, but is not an option.

That is a real pain and old technology.  They sent me the initial log-in ID as "first name initial plus account number" (which seems to be my permanent log-in ID), that really did not give me a warm and fussy feeling at all.  Security and old tech are two "minor" issues, but hey, I am easy nowadays as long as it is equal/above 4% in APY ($20K is not bad, either).

WaB,

It seems to be on a case-by-case basis.  For online applications, only five questions were asked and the approvals were automatic and spontaneous; which made me think that they were soft pulls.  On this bank thread, there were also reports (e.g., Anon. #7 of the link below) that no hard pull was done (FICO did not change at all for the subsequent 2-3 months).

http://www.depositaccounts.com/bl...-tn-tx.htm

On the other hand, BF is not the only one which does hard pulls (if it is the case).  Many RCA banks I know of conduct hard pulls as well.

51hh:

If hard-pulls are conducted on a case-by-case basis, I think that would be considered a discriminatory practice by the bank.  With respect to Anon #7's comment that FICO did not change at all, he/she fails to mention whether all 3 FICO scores did not change or only 1 (and which one).  I would recommend that you call your branch manager (as I did) to see whether a TransUnion hard pull inquiry is done for all applicants.