Credit Card Eligibility Calculator - Workings

thor

I'm about to look for a 0% no fee credit card to do a balance transfer so used the the eligibility calculator and found that Virgin was giving me a 0% probability(even when setting the transfer amount to virtually nothing) while Natwest gave me a 100% rating. I know that you can't know for certain what their selection criteria is but how does the calculator work exactly? Does it actually get information financial institutions like a credit report does or does it just use the data I entered and make a guess(which is why it does not touch your credit score)? I used to have a Virgin CC a few years ago before closing that account down and I also have an existing Nationwide CC both of which could influence the eligibility calculator if it could glean that info from an external source.

eskbanker

We use ‘soft searches’ to check your eligibility. These let us check your credit report to see how likely you are to be accepted for each credit card, but they leave no mark that affects your credit score. You'll be able to see the searches we’ve made when you next check your credit report, but lenders won’t.

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The soft searches we use will appear in a separate 'other searches' section of your credit report - not in the 'credit searches' section with the ones lenders can see. They will be clearly identified as coming from MoneySavingExpert, HD Decisions or the lender’s name where we work with them directly.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/eligibility/credit-cards/search/

thor

I am aware that my credit report will not be affected by the eligibility checker and am not too bothered if it even did. I'm just trying to figure out if the checker is able to determine that I used to have a Virgin card previously and have a Nationwide card currently.

eskbanker

The point of sharing the explanatory information was to illustrate that that they do check data on your credit files, but I don't have any insight as to exactly which data they access…