Let me step in on this one. As far as Junny giving people with 600 scores and no history cards for 10k, that didn't happen. There were still declines and low limits during this fiasco.
This is the scenario IMHO:
Juniper, was a subprime bank before the Barclays takeover. No one with decent credit applied fo this card simply because the bank solicited rebuilder and subprime. A little research in a couple of pull data bases showed this approvals with these limits had been going on for over year (the timeframe I was able to find) with the same scores that were reported during the fiasco.
What appears to have happened (again my opinion). Is that the underwriting model that Junny used gave higher limits to people with certain scores above a certain range. The problem is that there was no built-in fail-safe for multiple applications submitted in a short period of time. What set off alarms were people app'ing multiple cards (heard 5 or 6 at a time) and getting approved on each one for those higher limits. Some were able to keep accounts, even 5 or 6, (higher score range only) while others were CLD'd. It seems the magic number for those approved above 5k was 5k for a while. This was the result of manual review.
I think Junny was cutting its exposure in possible unsecured debt. The number of apps from this fiasco alone had to number in the multiples of thousands. One reason I believe this bank was simply hedging its bets is because they are only going to dedicate so much of its portfolio to unsecured debt. In the culling, Junny tried to keep their newly found credit worthy customers which resulted in long-time customers that they solicited from the near and subprime pool either being cut to embarrasment or closed altogether. This is what I take issue with.
There was a glitch, but IMHO, it wasn't the limits. It was the ability to app multiple times. I say this because the company who writes the decisioning code and issues these cards is not some fly-by-night operation. That and the fact that not all mega-winners where targeted in the shakedown. The system got surprised when apps started coming in with scores in the 800s when the bank usually solicits those in the upper 5s.
I applied during this fiasco and was approved for 10k which was cut to 5k which I closed immediately. Should have known better due to the reasons I had just closed my previous accounts with them a day earlier. My app actually went through secondary decisioning with the 7-10 day message so that was not the result of any computer glitch. The cut however, I believe was a result of a cry from above that too much unsecured debt had been approved and somebody better fix it.
BTW at the time my TU score was above 700.
Message Edited by Brammy on
12-16-2007 09:50 AM
