Both turned down for a credit card

mmmsnow

Just hoping for a little advice. My husband and I both bank with HSBC and we recently both applied for their Reward Credit Card. I've been with the bank since last year. We have a good household income, no dependents, we are home owners with no debt apart from the mortgage and my student loan (around £25k total, mortgage is with FD). We both work full time and each have a credit score of 999. I checked the Credit Club for any weird stuff and it showed that HSBC ran a check but that's all. We recently took out a 24 month interest free deal to spread payments on a new sofa. I personally have one credit card and my husband has two. We were hoping to replace our existing cards with these reward ones.



HSBC won't give me a reason for the rejection, instead listing all the things that it "could be" (none of them apply). I did recently change jobs but my husband has been with the same company for 21 years and he's also been rejected.

I'm concerned as the only other time I was rejected for a credit card was due to someone using my address to fraudulently open credit accounts (this was 20 years ago and has long since been sorted). Has anyone else been in a similar situation? Is HSBC just very cautious or do you think there may be an issue?

DCFC79

mmmsnow wrote: »

Just hoping for a little advice. My husband and I both bank with HSBC and we recently both applied for their Reward Credit Card. I've been with the bank since last year. We have a good household income, no dependents, we are home owners with no debt apart from the mortgage and my student loan (around £25k total, mortgage is with FD). We both work full time and each have a credit score of 999. I checked the Credit Club for any weird stuff and it showed that HSBC ran a check but that's all. We recently took out a 24 month interest free deal to spread payments on a new sofa. I personally have one credit card and my husband has two. We were hoping to replace our existing cards with these reward ones.



HSBC won't give me a reason for the rejection, instead listing all the things that it "could be" (none of them apply). I did recently change jobs but my husband has been with the same company for 21 years and he's also been rejected.

I'm concerned as the only other time I was rejected for a credit card was due to someone using my address to fraudulently open credit accounts (this was 20 years ago and has long since been sorted). Has anyone else been in a similar situation? Is HSBC just very cautious or do you think there may be an issue?

Your score of 999 is neither here nor there.

whats exactly on your reports ?
Any red flags

Any other debts eg loans ?

What if any are there any debts on the cards ?


Are your finances stretched or do you have surplus end of every month /

[Deleted User]

Do you meet the criteria for the rewards credit card?

To be eligible for the HSBC Rewards Credit Card, you need to:

have an annual income/pension before tax of £8,500 or more
be a UK resident*
be over 18
And be an existing HSBC UK customer who holds one of the below:

an Advance account
a Bank Account or Premier Account, and have paid a total of £1750 a month into your account over the last 6 months, not including money transferred from other sole or joint personal accounts held with HSBC UK.

mmmsnow

DCFC79 wrote: »

Your score of 999 is neither here nor there.

whats exactly on your reports ?
Any red flags

Any other debts eg loans ?

What if any are there any debts on the cards ?


Are your finances stretched or do you have surplus end of every month /

No loans. As I said, we have a £15k mortgage and I have £10k in student loans. We have a large amount in savings as well and our finances aren't stretched (in fact, we are overpaying our mortgage and my loan with the excess going into a savings account).


My credit card has a zero balance right now and my husband maybe has £200 on his. We only use them as we get cashback and clear the balance at the end of each month.


The only issue that I see on the Credit Club report is my low income to debt ratio. I have less than 1% of my income as debt, not including the student loan.

mmmsnow

!!! wrote: »

Do you meet the criteria for the rewards credit card?

To be eligible for the HSBC Rewards Credit Card, you need to:

have an annual income/pension before tax of £8,500 or more
be a UK resident*
be over 18
And be an existing HSBC UK customer who holds one of the below:

an Advance account
a Bank Account or Premier Account, and have paid a total of £1750 a month into your account over the last 6 months, not including money transferred from other sole or joint personal accounts held with HSBC UK.

I meet all of the eligibility criteria, as does my husband.

[Deleted User]

You mentioned checking Credit Club, but not your other files - have a look at those first for any issues.

mmmsnow

Deleted_User wrote: »

You mentioned checking Credit Club, but not your other files - have a look at those first for any issues.

There's nothing unexpected on Experian. I regularly look at this, force of habit from that previous fraud. There is nothing I can see that would be a red flag to a credit card company.


Will other companies see that I've been rejected for a credit card? I was hoping to apply for an RBS Rewards card since obviously I'm not getting one from my own bank

Willing2Learn

Deleted_User wrote: »

You mentioned checking Credit Club, but not your other files - have a look at those first for any issues.

mmmsnow wrote: »

There's nothing unexpected on Experian. I regularly look at this, force of habit from that previous fraud. There is nothing I can see that would be a red flag to a credit card company.

There are three main CRAs in the UK and you are only checking the data on one. You need to check exactly what data is being recorded on your other two files too

Equifax = https://www.equifax.co.uk/Products/credit/statutory-report.html
TransUnion = https://www.callcreditstatreport.co.uk/CreditReport

thriftylass

mmmsnow wrote: »

We recently took out a 24 month interest free deal to spread payments on a new sofa. I personally have one credit card and my husband has two. We were hoping to replace our existing cards with these reward ones.

Maybe it's the fact that you already have available credit. Add the available credit of the 3 cards and the value of the sofa deal and compare that to you income? Just another thought?

mmmsnow

thriftylass wrote: »

Maybe it's the fact that you already have available credit. Add the available credit of the 3 cards and the value of the sofa deal and compare that to you income? Just another thought?

My available credit is currently about 5% of my income. I don't take credit limit increases. I only have one card. My husband has two and the sofa is under his name but he still available credit is only 10% of his income at most. We applied separately for the credit cards so I'm not sure why we were both turned down.

mmmsnow

Willing2Learn wrote: »

There are three main CRAs in the UK and you are only checking the data on one. You need to check exactly what data is being recorded on your other two files too

Equifax = https://www.equifax.co.uk/Products/credit/statutory-report.html
TransUnion = https://www.callcreditstatreport.co.uk/CreditReport

Just checked Equifax and it's also fine. Apart from the verification part asking me which credit card I signed up for in April 2003 :rotfl: