Ask A Back Office CC Company Employee ANYTHING

[Kostya1992]

I have some questions.

How much do inquiries affect APR that you recieve when approved? Do you factor in inquires from over 12 months ago? Lets say I have 20 inquiries 14 months ago and none since then, would that bother an analyst?

What do you make working as an analyst?

[WNA888]

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@chalupaman wrote:

When an CC account gets hit with adverse action like having the credit line slashed or the account completely closed, is that a decision that is determined automatically by the system or is there a whole team of people that monitor accounts for any risk factors?

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AAs are mostly done by a computer based on directives of internal risk models. The system takes action, generate the top 2 to 4 reasons depending on the bank, mails out a letter to comply with federal banking laws and regulations, etc. No human interventions are involved. We have a boatload of account. No bank is going to make their employees go through each account one by one, and say uhmmm.. good account, next, good account, hmmm this one, hmmm probably will default, let's hit the CLD or CLOSE ACCT button. Banks want their employees to be productive. Almost everything is completely automated nowadays. This is 2015. I can speak safely for other banks that no "whole team of people  monitor accounts for any risk factors".

[Deltadog03]

Thanks for the response, you rock!  The credit sim *on here* says they should all go up another 20 points once my util goes down after Barclays and Cap 1 report in the next 5 days.  I have 0/750 Cap 1 card.  AU on my DW 0/500  Those are a year old.  I have a Merrick bank 0/1000 and a Barclays, both about a year and a half+ old (Barclays is 0/1700) and my Cap 1 card is 2 years old and 950/3300.  

[WNA888]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Would a credit analyst be reprimanded for approving an applicant through recon when he/she clearly should not be approved for the card?

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If it's done in good faith and can be justified in a persusaive way, then no. Their job are to make decisions (hopefully the net effect is a profit for us and not a loss).  If someone approves a person with like a 400 FICO with tons of bad acounts, then yeah the CA is likely to get shown the door.

[chalupaman]

Thanks for the reply! That was something I had always been curious about as to how those decisions are made.

[EW800]

Thank you for your time.

I believe you mentioned earlier that a SP is done once a month or so, but more often if something triggered a concern. That really hit a trigger with me, as I am SP'd like crazy by Cap1 - to the point where it is funny! I have never had a late payment with them, for the past 12 months or so PIF every month, have less than 1% Util across the board, and my scores have gone up a lot in the last year, following rough times a few years ago. They SP me all 3 CRA's, literally several times a month. A few times it has even been two days in a row, whereas other creditors SP me just every couple of months. Would this mean that somehow I got in their crosshairs and they think I am extremely high risk? It is no big deal that they do, but seems odd on a 15 year old account that has never had even a slight hiccup.

[WNA888]

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@Anonymous wrote:
How sensitive is your underwriting to new accounts with high CLs, Particularly with high utilization the first billing period or two but HEAVY if not full payment.

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You should be good. Remember that we want you to pay interest! That's how we make money in addition to AFs and interchange (swipe) fees. We just don't want a high balance velocity unless you make "heavy" payments lol. In other words, don't increase your debt very fast and pay minimum (or close to it). It increases the risk.

[Imperfectfuture]

A. Thread is BOOKMARKED. Good info.

B. If you offer corporate, small business cards, with personal guarantee, does the underwriting tend to be more lax? Or more strict?

C. Does an annual fee loosen up the strict lending requirements? I.e. Are folks more likely to get approved for travel cards with annual fees, than the same high limit signature style card with no annual fee?

[WNA888]

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@EddieK wrote:

If I open 5 cards in a week(not with your company), would that potentially lead you to SP my credit?

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Yeah, CC companies set "triggers" that set off when your credit stability is changed. If you apply for 5 CCs, the model says that you probably are going to a commit a bust-out fraud or in desparate need of credit.  Unfortunately, our model don't take account the possibility of people AOR-ing or liking to rack of bonus points cause almost all of our customers don't do that. It barely changes the risk model when our statisticians try to program that in.

[WNA888]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Also, why 6 months until an account is considered aged?

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Ask FICO, not us. They program their mathematical model so that only a person with a history of 6 months is scorable. It makes sense, cause a person with a 2 month credit history of paying on time is not going to say as much as a person with 2 years credit history with perfect payments. One of the factors of predicting risk is stability.