Can simply owning a Vanquis (or similar) credit card have a negative affect on you?

capitaine

I opened up a current account with Natwest today and during the review the personal banker asked whether I owned any credit cards.
I mentioned owning a Vanquis card and she pulled a face and then it might be a problem. I asked why and she said that often people who own them get rejected for accounts, loans and mortgages

I'm trying to find out if there's possibly any truth in that or if simply, the people she has seen and own the cards have poor credit anyway hence the reason for them evening owning that card in the first place and they would have failed the credit check regardless.

Anyone know?

Jcts

When lenders look at your credit file, they only see the type of credit facility it is. It will just say credit card, or if it's a mobile contract it'll say something like communications, loan etc etc etc. It will state payment history, limit history, current limit, date of account opened etc etc etc but it will NOT say the name of the company. However, lenders can make an educated guess. If you have one or two credit cards and the limits are in the low hundreds, it'll would be a safe bet that these would be sub prime cards such as Vanquis, Capital One, Aqua, etc

mrmajika

Jcts wrote: »

When lenders look at your credit file, they only see the type of credit facility it is. It will just say credit card, or if it's a mobile contract it'll say something like communications, loan etc etc etc. It will state payment history, limit history, current limit, date of account opened etc etc etc but it will NOT say the name of the company.

That's very interesting and not something I had ever considered. Are you confident that's true?

Jcts

I believe that to be 100% correct

reclusive46

I concur with the above comments. Lenders don't see who accounts are with. Just the type.

You-kip

The way I've always seen it is although lenders are not visible to other lenders when searching your credit files I've always believed they're pretty clued up to the fact that having £750 credit limits would give away that you haven't got prime credit cards.

Could be totally wrong as I'm just guessing.

reclusive46

You-kip wrote: »

The way I've always seen it is although lenders are not visible to other lenders when searching your credit files I've always believed they're pretty clued up to the fact that having £750 credit limits would give away that you haven't got prime credit cards.

Could be totally wrong as I'm just guessing.

I doubt they'd really care anyway. Someone has to start somewhere and even prime lenders have limits starting from £400.

Hominu

From the OPs post, they didn't search and query the information - they asked them what kind of credit cards they owned, so they it was Vanquis, so they'll then check the history of usage and how long they've had it, and may reject them for prime credit products.

Likewise I have a card with a £500 limit (Aqua), but I also have a card with a 10K limit (Tesco), so if they ask I simply tell them I have several and the limits.

CG19a

I'm thinking along the lines that since Vanquis etc are credit building cards - what the advisor probably meant was that people with those types of cards have problematic credit histories - late payments, defaults etc, rather than just declining someone through a snobbish view on their credit card.