Credit File

[straitman]

I for one am looking forward to the explanation.

 

[beardoc]

Got the call back last night from someone in "Customer Advocacy" at Citibank, and he relayed a few things:

* He went to lengths to try to ensure I understood the difference between an enquiry (where you make an application for credit) and an access (where Citibank just looks at the data).

* The first access in May 2007 was Citibank's Business/Sales section looking to see whether they should target me for additional services or offers (which would involve further credit approval. Perhaps they were running offering things "pre-approved" - I am hypothesising that "pre-approval" might induce people to be more likely to sign up.

* The second access in June 2007 was Citibank's Risk Assessment arm, checking to see whether I had any defaults or otherwise which they were unaware of.

In the discussion, it came to light that Citibank does run these sorts of programs regularly, and likely they will in the future.

 

[oz_mark]

* The first access in May 2007 was Citibank's Business/Sales section looking to see whether they should target me for additional services or offers (which would involve further credit approval. Perhaps they were running offering things "pre-approved" - I am hypothesising that "pre-approval" might induce people to be more likely to sign up.

So did you get any 'pre-approved' offers?

* The second access in June 2007 was Citibank's Risk Assessment arm, checking to see whether I had any defaults or otherwise which they were unaware of.

None of these things has ever turned up on my credit file, so I wonder if they just randomly pick customers...

 

[beardoc]

So did you get any 'pre-approved' offers?

No - if you see how often I apply for credit cards (I churn them around a lot, switching), you would see why!

None of these things has ever turned up on my credit file, so I wonder if they just randomly pick customers...

I'm wondering that as well.

 

[Schebesta]

I definately think its in regards to marketing because since Baycorp got taken over by Veda, Veda Advantage have gone out and been touting to was peoples databases with credit files and things like that. This improves marketers response rates and decreases the costs of banks to market to people.

 

[Nutcase]

I definately think its in regards to marketing because since Baycorp got taken over by Veda, Veda Advantage have gone out and been touting to was peoples databases with credit files and things like that. This improves marketers response rates and decreases the costs of banks to market to people.

Got it in one. Card companies and banks can buy the data from Veda (baycorp) and send pre-approved offers. They can be quite specific around what they want. EG; Home owner, 3 years work history, 3 years residential history, xx number or credit enquiries, etc etc - hence the "pre-approval" gig.

Citibank are the most aggressive in this space and when you sign up with them for a product, you are giving them permission to access your credit file whenever they like. Hence the reason that there are new citibank enquiries on your file. They seem to be the only ones doing this at the moment. Check the fine print of the original application and you will see that they have the right to so this- even though it seems unfair.

As the credit market tightens, the need for "quality" customers will increase and this sort of targeting will become more common. At the moment, new credit customers are tending to be of poor quality and therefore not really up to the banks standards.

 

[spunkarooney]

I am not going to go into too much detail about this as I have a complaint outstanding about this very matter.

I too have had my file accessed by a financial institution (FI) in circumstances which are similar to what others have described in this thread.

I wrote to the FI concerned asking it to explain the accesses to my credit file. The FI was unable to provide an explanation to my satisfaction.

As a result of all of this, the matter is now being investigated. I will say no more until the matter has been resolved.