Credit card rejections on the up
Published On 29 March 2007
Credit card companies are turning down more and more applications, a consumer website has said.According to MoneyExpert.com, major credit card companies have rejected 2.8 million applications from the public for new credit cards in the past six months. This equates to about 15,555 rejections every day over the period.
In total, the website's report found that around 10 per cent of all credit card applications were rejected in the last six months.
The move comes after banks and credit card providers reported that they are being increasingly affected by bad debt problems. Recently Barclays, one of the UK's largest credit card providers, revealed that it lost £1.5 billion in bad debts last year.
"Anyone with debt problems who is hoping for an easy way out by taking out another credit card is liable to find that they'll be turned down," said Sean Gardner, the chief executive of MoneyExpert.com.
"It is entirely sensible for credit card companies to reject applications from people with debt problems or who look as if they have already borrowed enough.
"Rising interest rates mean it is harder to service debts and people should not be encouraged to get deeper into debt."
Current figures put the UK's personal debt at £1.3 trillion and experts say that this figure is increasing by £1 million every four minutes.
