On the heels of a pretty good few days of credit, I decided to reach on one more app, for Citi DC. I was declined and wasn't really surprised, but thought I would share the relevant factors that went into it, in the hopes that it can help anyone else who is wondering and in a similar credit situation.
First off, relevant profile factors at the time of application (5/7/2020):
• EX F8 699, INQ 1/6, 5/12
• EQ F8 673 INQ 0/6, 4/12
• TU F8 693, INQ 0/6, 2/12
• Aggregate Reported Util 19.xx% on a TCL of $56,050
• AAoA 2 years 7 months
• AoOA 13y6m
• AoYRA 7 months
• Zero lates, zero missed payments
• Most recent opened card was 5/6/2020 (obviously not yet reporting)
Citi is known to use a double pull on EX and EQ here in NY, which they did for me. They use Bankcard 8 scores for approval. I don't know the EX score unfortunately as I initially pulled scores a month ago and at the time, for comparison, my EX F8 was 651 and EX B8 was 631, while EQ B8 was 612 last month. The bankcard score rose with my F8 score on EQ, to a quoted 664 (in the decline letter) throughout the month as I paid off a lot of debt and the UTI improvements increased my scores. At the beginning of April I had balances on 14 of 15 revolvers and one charge card, and aggregate util of 39.xx%. I had balances on 6 revolvers and one charge card, with ten cards at $0, when I apped.
Result was a decline, citing their weighting of my EQ score, which was affected by the presence of two derogs (both are old and paid - one falls off 11/2020 and the other falls 4/2021) as well as the length of time my accounts have been established (all but two of my cards are new as of 2/2018 or newer).
In order of appearance, my fail reasons were:
• Presence of derogs
• Length of time accounts were established
• Time since most recent account opened was too short
• Too many inquiries in the last 12 months
Now I went into this knowing Citi was picky and conservative and being real, I didn't think my odds were great. But I got other cards with a far less than optimal profile than many (such as Amex BCP at 656EX F8) and with fairly low inquiries, taking a pull or two wouldn't be devastating as I have no further plans to app for the near future, and since I've never had a prequal with Citi, I figured this would put me on their radar so that as I continue to improve, a prequal or mail offer may pop up in the future (I will wait for one of those two before apping again). In all, it was worth trying to see where I stood and what I'd need to fix.
It was interesting to me that they cited inquiries in the last 12 months, since what I typically read about was their 6/6 rule and that six months was the main timeframe they considered. Also, even though old and long paid, simply having derogs present on the reports (two on EQ, one on EX) was also enough to sway them. It's possible that if I didn't have the derogs, they'd overlook the inquiries from 7-12 months back, or if I had zero or one inquiry in 12 months, maybe the adjusted score on EQ would be buoyed up enough by what I would assume is a higher EX B8 score for approval, or that maybe account age would have been less of a factor. It's obvious they take the whole picture into consideration and the aggregate of my factors led to the denial.
Anyhow, that's the details of my declined Citi DC cold app. Hopefully it'll help someone else assess their own profile to decide if maybe they have a good enough shot to get it or if they're better off waiting.
