Rowan, I agree with your analysis as far as it goes, and have no desire to explain to a bank why I deserve to make (as opposed to am able to repay) my charges. There is more to it, though. I don’t even feel like providing all of the information necessary for the bank to decide how good a risk I am, and I’m not generally asked to. Today I happen to be a good credit risk. Five years ago, I was only a fair one. While it’s true that my income has gone up in the interim, the largest change by far is that now I have assets. No credit card application I’ve ever completed has asked me for information on the level of my assets in spite of the fact that knowing it would be of great value to the bank (especially if they had data over a long enough time period to be reasonably sure that I wasn’t gaming the system). I suspect that the reason is that banks know how intrusive and time consuming (for the consumer and the bank) it would be to get and verify information on assets. Because of this, generally only very large or secured loans include questions about assets.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
Wanting Privacy Has Other Implications
Date: 2002-06-26 06:12 pm (UTC)I agree with your analysis as far as it goes, and have no desire to explain to a bank why I deserve to make (as opposed to am able to repay) my charges. There is more to it, though. I don’t even feel like providing all of the information necessary for the bank to decide how good a risk I am, and I’m not generally asked to. Today I happen to be a good credit risk. Five years ago, I was only a fair one. While it’s true that my income has gone up in the interim, the largest change by far is that now I have assets. No credit card application I’ve ever completed has asked me for information on the level of my assets in spite of the fact that knowing it would be of great value to the bank (especially if they had data over a long enough time period to be reasonably sure that I wasn’t gaming the system). I suspect that the reason is that banks know how intrusive and time consuming (for the consumer and the bank) it would be to get and verify information on assets. Because of this, generally only very large or secured loans include questions about assets.
Telnar