Can a bank pull my credit report without notifying me?

[Leigh S.]

My LLC has a small investment loan for a multi-family property through a local credit union. Last week, I was notified through a credit monitoring service that the lender pulled my personal credit report.

I asked the banker about it and got this response: "We have to pull credit at least once a year when we do the annual review. The annual review is to help determine if there is any adverse changes in the financial condition of to borrow and guarantor. If there is then we need to look at what is causing the changes and possibly recommend some changes to help."

The loan payment has always been made before the due date and is in good standing. Is what they did legal? I've never had this happen on any loan.

[Matt Devincenzo]

Annual audits and reviews aren't uncommon in commercial or personal banking type scenarios where a large part of your credit worthiness is influenced by 'who' you are. It allows the bank to hopefully extend the credit a bit more freely knowing they are able to review and minimize their future risks every year. Otherwise they need to be more strict to ensure they mitigate the loan losses from life circumstance changes etc. It's another one of those areas where the 'consumer' side of things it is very uncommon, but in other commercial/professional areas it's much more common.