Rejected For Joint Account Despite Good Credit

lukekelly_2

My partner and I are rather confused. We recently applied for a joint current account at Natwest, of whom I am currently a customer (with a postgraduate student account), and were rejected. (My partner has a graduate account with Barclays.) They haven't given us any reason beyond "head office sent us an email rejecting the application with no reason but they are prepared to offer you a current account aline," something I clearly have no interest in as I currently have an account with them. The lady suggested we check our credit histories, which we believed to be clean, and indeed Experian flagged up no problems with either of us; we haven't missed any payments, have few liabilities and both have steady and reasonable incomes.

Being rejected from this current account in itself isn't a problem, although it is mystifiying, but it has left me concerned about our ability to obtain a mortgage or indeed any other financial product we might have a real need for in the next few years. Given that our credit history is good does anyone have any ideas on why we may have been rejected and what our best course of action is to remedy this situation and indeed obtain a joint bank account?

You have my thanks in advance.
Luke

rb10

Are you both on the electoral roll at the address you used to apply for the current account? This is often a reason for declines.

lukekelly_2

Yes, we're both on the electoral role at our current address. I have two years not on the electoral role (2005--2007) but my partner has a continuous record. The only slight incongruence here is that on our credit report Barclay's have her account as relating to her parent's address not our current address. Could this be a possible problem for them? (This is slightly strange as all their communication comes to our current address and has done a for a few years, but clearly some record somewhere hasn't been updated.)

Kavanne

You could try opening the account and then adding your OH on once it's opened?

JohalaReewi

Unfortunately, there is nothing that says banks have to give you an account if your credit history is good. Natwest (or any other bank) doesn't have to give you an account if it doesn't want to. At the end of the day, Natwest have said no and are within their rights not to say why. You can either try again or try another bank. There are still a few left at the moment

When you apply for credit, each lender has their own scoring system so you can easily be rejected by one company and accepted by another. That's just the way it goes. All you can do is keep an eye on your credit history and correct any errors. Also avoid getting black marks whenever possible.