Help please. Financial association means my application is declined

Starry-eyed_surprise

Hello everyone
I hope someone has some advice for me. I have - according to my credit report an 'excellent' score but - and here is the crunch - since last applying for a financial product my OH has got major financial difficulties and my application was rejected due to 'association'. We have a joint mortgage which has no problems associated with it and it is running smoothly. We are dealing with his situation together through CCCS (early days yet) and we are hopeful that we can sort this out. I have always run my finances separately from his (apart frtom the mortgage) but it seems that we are still in a Victorian era where a woman's finances seem to be inextricably linked to her husbands. Is there anything I can do to be accepted for a 0% card or will I just get more searches and rejections on my file? This seems so unfair. Any advice welcome.

frivolous_fay

I don't see how you can be financially disassociated from someone you're married to ... and have joint finances with. (ie. mortage)

I managed to get my siblings and parents removed from my credit report, but I share a bank account with my partner and have no doubt that means we are indisputably linked.

I'm surprised you were told the rejection was due to the association - in the past, lenders have sent me a letter of rejection and told me blah blah can't go into details but if you send £x you can have your credit report, and you may be able to find a clue in there...

YorkshireBoy

Starry-eyed_surprise wrote:

...it seems that we are still in a Victorian era where a woman's finances seem to be inextricably linked to her husbands.

It's nothing to do with "Victorian" times. If you had a financial association (eg Mortgage, joint loan, joint current account etc) with your son, nephew, father-in-law etc - or even your next door neighbour, they would all show on the credit reference agencies files.

Is there anything I can do to be accepted for a 0% card or will I just get more searches and rejections on my file? This seems so unfair. Any advice welcome.

I believe lenders used to offer an 'opt-out' search, meaning your financial associates' affairs wouldn't be taken into account. However, I also believe that most (all?) lenders have now ceased offering this 'get-out' due to irresponsible borrowing and an overall increase in bad debt.

The only suggestion I could give, other than formally financially disassotiating(sp?) yourself from your partner, is to thoroughly read all credit card T&C's looking for lenders that may offer the opt-out credit search. However, I don't think you'll see it worded like I've explained - you'll have to look for an omission, eg a lender may not inform you that your financial associates will be searched (most do!). They usually state that your financial associate has given permission to you for their file to be searched.

Starry-eyed_surprise

Thanks for replying frivolous_fay. The only finance we share is the mortgage - We each have our own bank accounts and no other shared finance. I had a similar letter to the one you said. I contacted the lender after checking my credit report and despite the fact that there is no problem with the mortgage the reason given on the phone was because of the problems my OH is having . I don't want to disassociate from him - or his financial problems but it would actually help us both if I could get access to a better CC deal.

Starry-eyed_surprise

Thanks YorkshireBoy
I'll try to look into this

Astaroth

the being married bit makes no difference to the matter at all and so this isnt really a "victorian times issue". As others have said, if you share a financial product with anyone else then you are financially linked to them and so their poor management of their own finances could affect the standing of the shared service which then has a knock on affect on your personal finances - eg your husband goes massively over the limit on all his credit cards and then cant pay his 50% of the mortgage, this means you now have to pay 100% of the mortgage which means you may not be able to afford your credit card repayments.

The only way to truely disassocaite yourself financially from your husband is of cause to change the mortgage into a single persons name which would then allow you to file a notice of disassociation with the credit reference agencies meaning they would then only take your finances into account.

I would also question your statement that you have an "excellent score" as you simply cannot know this. All lenders have their own scoring system and therefore no individual has an excellent score across all lenders - I dont know if you are confusing a credit score with a credit history? On a relative points scoring system one company I worked for gave 30 points for giving your contact number as a landline, 50 points for giving a mobile number (going back a few years here), 0 points for "exdirectory" (after all you only have their word for it that it is) and -30 points for no phone number. This compared to another company that actually gave 100 points for having an exdirectory number (after all you must be really important to have one) and a third company I worked for that didnt include your telephone number at all in their scoring system.

One word of warning on considering financial disassociation from your husband (if you are) some companies will see someone who is married but has no financial association to their partner as meaning their partner has a very bad rating and so apply a negative score for this.

Starry-eyed_surprise

Thanks Astaroth

I got my info on my credit score from a report from Credit expert who check the same source (experian) as the card I applied for used (M&S) . I have seen my credit file at experian too. Apparently my risk level was 'excellent' and the only tie in I have with OH is the mortgage as I have said.

I take your point about disassociating as I think you may be right about lenders making assumptions about your partner. It still seems very unfair that when you try to help yourself you are blocked. There was a section on the form which asked if you wanted anyone else linked to the card and I ticked 'no'. I have never had any problems before and I find this very frustrating. I guess that means I can't apply for anything now until his affairs are sorted which could be sometime. Obviously I don't want to disassociate from him - just his finances

Astaroth

You will see other posts on this forum about how pointless the credit expert and the other credit references "self score" system is as this is purely their own scoring system which will be different to almost every client they have.... credit reference agencies are there to provide the credit history which is then factored into the score but the actual methodology (and often the process of scoring itself) is done by the creditor (though these days I would suspect there is more fuzzy logic used than in my day so the referencing agencies probably pay a larger part in generating the score than they used to)

Just to be clear, wasnt suggesting that you disassociate with your husband in any way other than financial

JohalaReewi

I have been in this situation for several years where I am financially linked to someone with a black hole of a credit rating but mine is excellent. Some CC companies say no way (Tesco, GE) buts others have said yes (RBS, Amex, Nationwide, MNBA) so you just have to take a 'no' on the chin and try somewhere else.

Actually ,the GE one was very funny. i was refused a GE credit card (was after the 3% cashback) but my OH with the bad rating was able to get a loan from GE

Starry-eyed_surprise

Thanks JohalaReewi
This gives me hope. I will try again with one of the cards you suggest. Even if it's the same answer its worth a try if only to eliminate all possibilities. Otherwise, I'll just have to juggle my own finances. Guess I'll have a long time to practice in until OH's finances are squeaky clean again :rolleyes: