CREDIT card customers who pay off their balance each month are as much risk from being cut off by their lender as those that have lost control of their spiralling debts..
Credit checking agencies say banks are beginning to weed out customers with faultless borrowing histories because they can make little profit on them.
It comes as credit card company Egg was accused of withdrawing cards from some of its most responsible customers as part of a cull of those said to have a “higher than acceptable risk profile”.
The lender, part of US investment bank Citigroup, wrote to 161,000 customers - 7% of its total base - last week to warn them their cards would be withdrawn in 35 days. They can still repay balances over time.
Many Egg customers who caught up in the clamp down claim they are “risk free” customers who have never breached their credit limit and who pay off their balance each month. Gillian Cox, an Egg customer from Farnham, Surrey, said she was “absolutely furious” to learn that her credit card had been cancelled in what she described as an “unbelievable arbitrary action”.
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She said she her husband were retired with no mortgage and no debts and “always paid the balance off in full each month”. Trevor Smith, from Nottingham, who also pays of his balance each month has also had his card cancelled. “It’s disgusting that they are making out its just the bad ones who are being dropped,” Smith said. “Fair enough if that’s what they want to do, but don’t send a really upsetting letter that makes it sound like we have a bad credit history all of a sudden. Good riddance... if that’s how they treat people.”
One industry insider said that as businesses credit card providers had a right to ditch customers who do not generate income. “In the last two years more and more customers have been paying off their credit card debt and that means less interest charges and other fees for the provider,” the source said. “Maintaining a customers account costs money - it’s hardly surprising that they want to lose some of those people.”
MBNA, the credit card giant, recently introduced annual charges for those customers who very rarely use their accounts.
Egg denied it was targeting unprofitable customers, saying the cull spun from a review instigated by Citi when it bought the internet bank from the Prudential last May.
It said customers were chosen if their credit profile had deteriorated since they had joined Egg, and was mainly based on their relationship with Egg rather than taking into account if they had fallen behind with payments to other lenders or utilities.
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“This is not a decision we have taken lightly,” said Egg spokeswoman, Rachel Roe. “We have looked carefully at it so that we wouldn’t put innocents onto a black list.”
However, credit checker Experian said better customers may be less welcome in future as banks chase profitable business to offset losses from delinquent borrowers with rising bad debts.
“Put yourself in their shoes. You spend very little and pay it off every month. You are not an ideal customer for them,” said Peter Brooker, a spokesman for the company.
Lenders make some money from retailers who pay per transaction charged to a credit card, but most of the profit comes from hefty interest fees.
Changes in the Banking Code next month will put the onus on lenders to monitor customers they think could be getting into financial difficulty.
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Credit card firms have already been trimming customers’ borrowings. Barclaycard clamped down on spending limits for 500,000 of its 9.6m customers in 2006, but says it has no plans to follow Egg by withdrawing cards.
Royal Bank of Scotland, which has 11m credit cards in use under brands including Natwest, Mint and Tesco Personal Finance, said: “The credit card is there for people to use as they want. We don’t want customers that aren’t managing their credit card.”
Credit card providers have become more discerning about who they accept as new customers in recent years. Two years ago only about one in three of applicants for new cards were declined. That figure has since risen to nearly 50%. Barclaycard now turns down more applicants than it accepts.