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I applied for the card but got an instant rejection. Nothing has changed from our end. Joint income of over £100k. I only have one Platinum card that I have held for almost 9 months. Always paid on time. I did cancel my previous BA Amex about 9 months ago so is there a minimum period change? I thought it was 6 months.
My question is do I let it go or speak to them as to what the reason is? Is there any point? if they have reversed decisions for others, what is the right course of action?
Have you moved house recently or anything like that?
Amex apparently maintain their own records rather than relying on the credit agencies to the extent other card providers do. An anecdotal reading of this forum would suggest Amex are being far too discerning in their choice of who to dance with.
Funnily enough player 2 had to go through a review to get the card last time so I’ve decided she should just keep her card rather than risk being rejected for it.
No, not moved home. Is it worth pursuing by contacting them or best left for say, a year?
I had this last year after a 2 year break – Amex said it was a computer decision and to reapply after 90 days (there’s no 6 month rule, this just used to apply to being eligible for a SUB before they changed it to 2 years). I reapplied and was accepted immediately, with no change to financial circs, so who knows what logic the computer applies?!
What is your total credit limit of all your cards (not just Amex) versus your income?
Perhaps reduce the limit(s) on your other card(s) to give some headroom for the new one?
As BWS says Amex (and credit card providers generally) are tightening up their lending criteria.
I applied for the card but got an instant rejection. Nothing has changed from our end. Joint income of over £100k. I only have one Platinum card that I have held for almost 9 months. Always paid on time. I did cancel my previous BA Amex about 9 months ago so is there a minimum period change? I thought it was 6 months.
My question is do I let it go or speak to them as to what the reason is? Is there any point? if they have reversed decisions for others, what is the right course of action?
I’m not sure why there is any great surprise about rejection here. Your sole or household income doesn’t buy an entitlement to dart in an out of products at whim. You are relatively new to Platinum and only relatively recently cancelled the card you are now reapplying for. Amex used to be very relaxed generally and amongst the most gung-ho of unsecured lenders; that is no longer the case, so while you say nothing has changed for you, everything else has.
Amex obviously doesn’t publish specific criteria for acceptance, including gaps between cards/applications and they are anyway very dynamic. There is however, one overriding issue that has been much written about here by me and and others which applies to all card issuers – a sea change in the overall credit environment means that cancelling cards with a view to reapplying no longer has the same prospect of success at all and/or may have lower credit limits. This is simply a reversion to normality after a longish period of unnaturally low inflation and interest rates.
In this respect lenders seem to have a better awareness of the financial prospects for borrowers than many borrowers themselves.
Funnily enough player 2 had to go through a review to get the card last time so I’ve decided she should just keep her card rather than risk being rejected for it.
We had the same and decided to keep the card the same as you…Having just bought 4 long haul tickets without a 241 its now the most valuable card we could own and a few cheeky signup miles every 2 years are not worth it.
We also had to surrender £8k of credit on another Amex card and was given only a £2k limit in return.
How long did you hold the BA Amex before cancelling?
As always, personal strategies need to be reviewed if the environment changes so that the risk of not getting further credit, nor even replacing existing lines of credit at the values currently held, is taken into account.
As we know, this risk became very high in covid and for many personal credit risk profiles, has not so far returned to pre-covid levels of risktaking by lenders overall.
Practically, this means being careful not to give up any existing line of credit (eg a card) until you are sure of your way forward.
What would interest me is whether Amex suffered higher losses on personal credit than they did previously since covid, and to what extent, or whether Amex hasn’t lost much more but is keeping ahead of the game by being pre-emptive. Also how this compares to other lenders – most of which offer credit cards but not also charge cardd like Amex.
@Lady London – Amex net write-offs for delinquencies more than doubled in Q1 2023 vs Q1 2022 to almost US$500m. That’s a global figure, they don’t break it out by country but my understanding is that the UK is quite difficult already which is influencing decisions as well as anticipating much worse to come as many incomes stay fairly static in the face of high inflation, hugely increased mortgage costs and falling property prices. The Bank of England, Fed and ECB are all trying to slow economies, so Amex will also be wary of bug job losses to come. Basically, people have got rather used to a certain set of conditions over the last ten years which were far from the long term norm. When we first bought a property mortgage rates were 14%!
My fist mortgage was at 14% too. Last night someone in their 30’s told me she was appalled at current interest rates and was banking on them coming back down to “normal” in a few years. Way too many people are over stretched. I’m not suggesting that’s the case for the OP of course but I think the financial institutions are right to be cautious.
Amex used to be very relaxed generally and amongst the most gung-ho of unsecured lenders; that is no longer the case, so while you say nothing has changed for you, everything else has.
There’s definitely some change. Last week I requested reallocating some of the credit – moving more of it to the plat to book all travel expenses in one place. Even though I specifically asked for no increase in overall credit, the CSO had to get approval to reallocate. Before covid, this would’ve been done in a few clicks.
My fist mortgage was at 14% too. Last night someone in their 30’s told me she was appalled at current interest rates and was banking on them coming back down to “normal” in a few years. Way too many people are over stretched. I’m not suggesting that’s the case for the OP of course but I think the financial institutions are right to be cautious.
I bought my first property in early 1991 and for the first 10 months I never paid the same payment as the interest rate increased every single month until peaking over 14%.
The difference is that I bought on a single salary at 3x my salary and the property cost below £60k. This is just outside the M25 southwest of London. Today the property is worth over £300k. And the equivalent job does not pay £100k. For that reason I can’t see interest rates going anywhere near 14% again.
I feel sorry for anyone starting out trying to buy a property today. I don’t really see how anyone can buy a property on their own, let alone without getting into far higher levels of debt than I suspect me you and JDB had to to buy our first homes.
Always baffles me why people think it is so strange to get rejected for a card and why they are owed an explanation. It’s not the end of the world, move on to the next opportunity.
My fist mortgage was at 14% too. Last night someone in their 30’s told me she was appalled at current interest rates and was banking on them coming back down to “normal” in a few years. Way too many people are over stretched. I’m not suggesting that’s the case for the OP of course but I think the financial institutions are right to be cautious.
I bought my first property in early 1991 and for the first 10 months I never paid the same payment as the interest rate increased every single month until peaking over 14%.
The difference is that I bought on a single salary at 3x my salary and the property cost below £60k. This is just outside the M25 southwest of London. Today the property is worth over £300k. And the equivalent job does not pay £100k. For that reason I can’t see interest rates going anywhere near 14% again.
I feel sorry for anyone starting out trying to buy a property today. I don’t really see how anyone can buy a property on their own, let alone without getting into far higher levels of debt than I suspect me you and JDB had to to buy our first homes.
You are totally right. I’m not without sympathy at all. However it worries me that those young people who did manage to buy at seriously low rates will not manage at todays. They often have very little wriggle room. I wasn’t judging them, just worrying on their behalf. I’m a mum to 4 only one of which has managed to buy so far.
Last night someone in their 30’s told me she was appalled at current interest rates and was banking on them coming back down to “normal” in a few years.
For reference the average interest rate in the last 50 years is a smidge over 7% so you’re right, I think they’re going to be disappointed by “normal”
It’s easy to forget, for those of us who experienced prior up-and-downs, that interest rates had been vanishingly close to 0% for 15 years. If mortgages are typically 25 years, it means that more than half of active mortages currently held have only ever experienced negligible rates, as had financial industry workers in some now really quite senior positions.
I took on a large amount of variable-rate debt (from my perspective, anyway) about 7 years ago to buy a business. The lending bank required me to “stress test” for base interest rates rising … to 1%! The bank employee approving the loan (who was a fair bit younger than me) laughed at me and told me I was weird when I in fact did a business plan for raises to 3%, 6% and 9% base rate and how I would be able to manage each situation. Worrying to think how those who relied on banking advice at that level might be faring now 🙁
Joint income of over £100k.
That.
Joint income isn’t assigned much (if anything) value by lenders. The driver of the decision is your personal income, any partner income is supplemental and nice to have but given the partner isn’t a formal guarantor to your debt it’s incidental.
In other words, it makes a big difference whether your “Joint income of over £100k” is split 90k+10k or 10k+90k.
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