How to predict CL on new cards?

Anonymalous · ‎03-30-2024

@MudkipsRKooL wrote:
@Slabenstein
is right. From reading the forums and also facebook groups you do kinda get a feel of what they will give you. Older systems with prepprovals really helped too from AMEX to Discover/Sam's Club. I don't know why they got rid of it. But say it's def. income based and how much you already have with the creditor.

Say for example your income is 60K, then most lenders will only will loan out a total of 30K total credit to you. The only exception I see from this is Discover and Bank of America. It's not exact science but sort of like saying if you are the "ideal" candidate you would get 100% of your total SL, and then get docked down for attributes.

I think income is a factor, but less than you think. There are plenty of examples of people on this board with CLs much higher than their incomes, and people with very high incomes whose limits are barely in the 4 digit range. After all, most of the time you'll get a credit card based on your stated income. If it was really important, they'd want proof every time.

The primary factor affecting SLs seems to be your past history. They want proof you can handle a certain amount of credit before they'll give you more. If your credit profiles show that, then you're pretty low risk, regardless of the number you typed in. That's why new SLs tend to be fairly close to your previous limits, and why SLs tend to increase over time.

And of course, they'll dramatically slash what they would otherwise offer if they see signs of risk. This could be being new to credit, high DTI, recent lates, high balances, applying for or opening a lot of new tradelines, and things like that.

Though guessing the exact number is like predicting the weather. Sometimes you'll be way off.

Traveler101 · ‎04-01-2024

There is no sure fire way to predict a sl out the gate. However one can look at the predictability of a lender. I will give you my example. My last 5 approvals were as follows..

Amex 32,600

USB 5,000

First Tech 25,000

Boa 24,000

Bcu 30,000

At the time I applied to usb, I had just opened amex about 30 days prior. It was not reporting at the time. Each pulled a different report. Usb, pulled tu alone. I checked, they did not sp any other reports. What they saw was no new cc in over 24 months at time I was approved. Yet their cl was far below any other.

Certain banks have a history of being conservative. While I have no city accounts, I can tell you from my experience, Barclay's and usb can be conservative. Reading posts about city, I have read many times, people express them to be conservative. Especially on your first card. This was not your first, so maybe it's time to slow down with them. Our history's are not far off. My oldest cc is 8y5m with an average of 4y5m on open accounts. 10 open cc.

You have a vast amount of cards in a relatively short time when you consider history length. Perhaps slowing down a bit could net you some better results. In the meantime, grab any sp cli's you can grab and build up your limits.