Customers of credit card providers who have a faultless repayment record are said to be at as much risk of being cut off by their lenders as those who are out of control of their spiralling debts.
Banks are beginning to identify borrowers with flawless records in order to withdraw their cards as they are unable to make a worthwhile profit from them, according to credit checking agencies.
The claims come in the wake of Egg withdrawing accounts from people early in 2008 who they said had a “higher than acceptable risk profile”. Yet some of their most responsible customers were affected by this move much to their bemusement.
Egg who are part of the US investment bank Citigroup, contacted 161,000 of their customers, which equates to 7 per cent of its total client base, to warn them their cards were to be withdrawn within 35 days.
Customers reacted angrily to this move, saying they were ‘risk free’ borrowers who had never violated their credit limit and had paid off their balance each month on time.
A spokesman for the credit card industry said, “In the last two years more and more customers have been paying off their credit card debt and that means less interest charges and other fees for the provider. Maintaining a customer’s accounts costs money, it’s hardly surprising that they want to lose some of those people.”
Egg denied that unprofitable customers had been targeted, claiming the action was taken following a review instigated by Citigroup when they took over the online bank from the Prudential in May 2007.
The report highlighted customers whose credit profile had deteriorated since joining Egg as those to contact about withdrawing their account. This led to people being judged on their relationship with Egg, as opposed to whether they had fallen behind with payments to other lenders or utilities.
A spokeswoman for Egg, Rachel Roe, said, “This was not a decision taken lightly. We looked carefully at it so that we wouldn’t put innocents onto a black list.”
Credit checker Experian warned that good customers may be faced with the prospect of being unable to secure credit as banks looked for more profitable business to compensate for the losses of reckless borrowers with ever increasing debt problems.
Providers have become far more astute as to who they accept as new customers in recent years. In 2006, an average of 1 in 3 applicants for credit cards was declined, but by 2008 that figure had risen by almost 50 per cent.
A spokesman for the Royal Bank of Scotland, which has 11 million credit cards in use under brands such as NatWest and Mint, said, “The credit card is there for people to use as they want. We don’t want customers that aren’t managing their credit.”
Banking Code changes will see an onus being put on lenders to keep an eye on customers they believe could be getting into financial difficulty.
Barclaycard acted to reduce spending limits for 500,000 of its 9.6 million customers back in 2006 and now claim to turn down more new credit applicants than they accept.
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