@FinStar wrote:
@longtimelurker wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
Lenders are already dumb enough in many instances to hand out monster $80k limits to people like many of us that request a ton of CLIs while only using a tiny (in many cases 0%-1%) percentage of our current limit. They'd be even dumber (and therefore do it far less) to hand out those same monster limits or greater to those that seemingly have no desire and never request increases.
I think this is too biased to credit forum based thinking! I would guess that most "real-world" card holders don't request CLIs very much, if at all, and many/most not even be aware it is an option. So it's certainly possible that banks don't think of "no request" as no desire, and instead use card history, credit reports and other info to assess the chance of nudging more spending on their cards, and do auto CLIs for target customers, including, and perhaps especially, those with high limits who in general are going to be more affluent.
So from this view, with about equal evidence, it's those who repeatedly ask for CLIs (for no obvious good reason!) that are the outlier way of reaching large CLs
Precisely. Not only that, the examples that were cited upthread are not in the 'outlier' variety considering that this forum represents a fairly small fraction of actual real world scenarios. Not every affluent or HNW is a participant of this forum so it's silly to assume I'd be the only one (or 1 in 100) who has fairly similar outcomes to cite anything as such is next to impossible.
Surprising that not once in any of this have I seen the R-word: risk. That's really what's driving these decisions - not income, not desire, not ignorance or anything else, really.
Some banks will pro-actively extend additional credit to someone who didn't ask because the risk assessments they've run tell them there's a greater chance that individual would spend more with them while not placing unreasonable additional risk on them.
A risk assessment may suggest that an individual may not necessarily spend more on their cards, so there's nothing to be gained (or lost) by extending them more credit...so they don't. However, because there's nothing to lose either, that individual would be successful should they request a CLI.
Yet another assessment may suggest that the risks to extending additional credit outweigh the gains and/or increase risk to an unacceptable level. Those people won't get more even if they ask.
I would argue the only role affluence/income plays in this is to help frame and support the spend levels seen, but aside from that it really has no bearing. There seems to be a correlation but it's actually cooincidence; it's only because higher income individuals are usually more able to spend more monthly than lower income individuals. However, a low income individual who spends more (and repays!) than a high income individual will be more likely to get the larger limit based on the above risk assessments.
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