Which of the following lenders is likely to give the highest limit?

Alex9384

 
I know no one can tell for sure, but those of you who have applied for many credit cards over years might want to share their experience.
 
I'm going to do a balance transfer and I'm looking at these:
 
Sainsbury's
Virgin
Santander
M&S

Not sure if I should try TSB as they don't have an eligibility checker.

Santander gave me an estimate of lousy 1200 credit limit which is quite useless and far lower than any of my existing cards.

DullGreyGuy

Have you used the likes of ClearScore? They "guarantee" the rate and limit for certain lenders on their checks... Id take the term slightly loosely but to date each one has proven accurate for me inc once case where the lenders own checker gave a worse outcome. 

The problem is that each lender has their own preferences and so one person may have had got a big limit from Virgin (I did) but declined by Santander (I was) but the next person has had the reverse result because whilst they had a lower income they had a lower unsecured debt amount and that happened to be the mirror in preferences.

Martico

At various times when I was applying for and getting 0% deals to help pay down CC debt and move everything to 0%, Virgin gave me a 6,100 limit; Sainsbury's 2,500; M&S 2,500. Your circumstances and their mood will be different, of course, but that's my own experience

MalMonroe

Alex9384 said:

 
I know no one can tell for sure, but those of you who have applied for many credit cards over years might want to share their experience.
 
I'm going to do a balance transfer and I'm looking at these:
 
Sainsbury's
Virgin
Santander
M&S

Not sure if I should try TSB as they don't have an eligibility checker.

Santander gave me an estimate of lousy 1200 credit limit which is quite useless and far lower than any of my existing cards.

Hi, over the past few years I've done 0% balance transfers with Sainsbury's, Tesco and Virgin. (Not all at the same time, I hasten to add) 

As Martin L's advised in the past, it's always a good idea to do separate eligibility checks on their websites.

TSB credit cards haven't got a very good review in Which magazine.

https://www.which.co.uk/money/credit-cards-and-loans/credit-cards/credit-card-companies/tsb-credit-card-review-a6Hsu4e4KMQ2

If you scroll down that page too, there's more info about a comparison they've done, with Experian, of credit card providers. It's from last year but may still be informative.

Alex9384

Thanks all.

I tried Sainsbury's and Virgin for now.
Sainsbury's application gave me a blank final page so I don't know what happened or if it went through...
Virgin says Pending and that it takes them 7-10 days to hear from them. Great, so far both look like... not very good decisions.

CliveOfIndia

If it's any help, I got a Sainsbury's card a couple of years ago, they gave me a £15,000 limit.  I've just got an HSBC card (via a link on this site) and they gave me £12,000 - both cards were offering a zero percent APR and zero fee, which is the only reason I applied.

Of course it will depend to a large extent on your personal credit circumstance/income, but this may be of some help.

daivid

I've held cards from all those providers but as my circumstances have changed over time and cards were taken out over a span of 8 years (limits in bold are for cards over the last 2 years) or so what can be read from it is debatable. FWIW:
M&S 0% spending £1500 
Virgin 0% BT £6000, £7200, 0% spending £3800
Santander 0% BT £3800, £6800, £4800
Sainsbury's 0% BT £6000, £3000, £11000

Virgin are perhaps the most consistently generous for me, Sainsbury's were very generous last month. If your credit file is good and providers want your custom you may be able to take out a second card if the first does not come with a high enough limit. I've never had a problem taking out 2 cards within a few days (but would probably not have taken any others out for 6months either side).

blue.peter

Alex9384 said:

 
I know no one can tell for sure, but those of you who have applied for many credit cards over years might want to share their experience.

Not sure if I should try TSB as they don't have an eligibility checker.

Well, for what it's worth, my experience over the last few years is that Virgin, TSB and Santander have all given me exactly the same credit limit. Sorry, no experience of Sainsbury's or M&S.

In case you're eligible for a Nationwide Member credit card (Visa) and don't already have one, it might be of interest to you to know that the initial limit that I was given on that was about 50% higher than Virgin/TSB/Santander. They've since increased it twice, so that the limit I have on that is now more than double what the others gave me.

Alex9384 said:

 

Santander gave me an estimate of lousy 1200 credit limit which is quite useless and far lower than any of my existing cards.

I'm not at all sure that you should pay any attention to that £1,200 figure. I've often seen it used simply as an illustrative figure, by different banks, and then found that the actual limit offered was higher. I think that it's simply a standard number used as a basis for illustrating costs. Here, for example, is a screenshot from NatWest's:

Marchitiello

Aside of the reputation that MBNA and Barclaycard had in the past of being very generous with their initial limits, my experience in the recent past made me conclude that post Covid even more of a factor is definitely your total Credit limit across all your card provider and obviously your utilisation, but assuming the same amount of credit use on a rolling basis, the same provider has offered me about £15k when my total credit limit was about 120% of my annual income and about 1/3 of the above when my total credit limits across all cards was just above 150% of my income.  I appreciate that depending on credit profile no everyone will get to this level of credit lines, but you would potentially know what is likely to be (mine has been over 110% of my income more or less for 15 years at least.

So I would say if your existing credit portfolio means you are already towards the top of your total credit limit profile for most lenders, that is when you get limits of £1200 or even less when on other cards you may have 10 times that.

unfortunately, if the new credit line is needed fairly urgently, closing an unused Card to create extra room for a new card limit won’t help as it will take 2/3 months to actually update properly on your credit file.

Alex9384

OK, tried Sainsbury's one more time in dofferent browser and instead of white screen I got this after clicking the Submit button. Not much better. 

Alex9384

Marchitiello said:

Aside of the reputation that MBNA and Barclaycard had in the past of being very generous with their initial limits, my experience in the recent past made me conclude that post Covid even more of a factor is definitely your total Credit limit across all your card provider and obviously your utilisation, but assuming the same amount of credit use on a rolling basis, the same provider has offered me about £15k when my total credit limit was about 120% of my annual income and about 1/3 of the above when my total credit limits across all cards was just above 150% of my income.  I appreciate that depending on credit profile no everyone will get to this level of credit lines, but you would potentially know what is likely to be (mine has been over 110% of my income more or less for 15 years at least.

So I would say if your existing credit portfolio means you are already towards the top of your total credit limit profile for most lenders, that is when you get limits of £1200 or even less when on other cards you may have 10 times that.

unfortunately, if the new credit line is needed fairly urgently, closing an unused Card to create extra room for a new card limit won’t help as it will take 2/3 months to actually update properly on your credit file.

My combined credit limits across 6 cards were exactly 2x my gross annual income until the end of December when I closed 7k Amex CC.

I thought lenders see these changes much sooner than you can see it yourself on your free credit reports?