The New Credit Card Law
Thursday, February 25th, 2010The unfair credit card rate hikes was just one of the issues why the new credit card law was created and implemented. But lots of professionals and consumer advocates are still asking for much more protective set of laws and say that the new law is ether not adequate or might even cause more burden to individuals who are already credit card holders or seeking to get credit cards.
Currently, borrowers who are thought as “risky” suffer the most due to the high interest rates and fees being slapped on them. Lenders reasons for doing this is that customers who are deemed risky are the ones who have a higher likelihood to be at risk of loan default and raising fees and interest rates are ways to accumulate revenue from these types of customers just in case failure to pay occur. Several restrictions against this type of practice are also incorporated in the new law but there are also some new, yet not so new regulations which banks can “modify” to their advantage.
One of the resurrected regulations are the annual fees which was removed a decade ago. Although annual fees have already been included to a substantial number of statements, this is now something that all credit card consumers will have to deal with from now on.
Ways to create added revenue were also created by some credit companies. One of which is known as inactivity fee which can amount up to $20 for those who have refrained from using their credit card for six months. Another one is known as processing fee where for every paper statement processed, $1 is charged to the consumer.
Existing fees were also raised and one of them is the balance transfer fee. From 3 percent to 5 percent, one particular financial institution, JPMorgan Chase, will now charge customers who opt to do balance transfers to another provider in an effort to lower their credit card debt. Customers who want to do balance transfers would have to pay for it since doing the balance themselves would mean that they have to close the existing one which will not be acceptable for the new provider.
Getting new cards will now have a 13.6 percent interest rate compared to last year’s 10.7 percent. The increase in base rates is also expected to rise later on and this would be a concrete legitimate basis for lenders to raise variable interest rates as well.
The ability to get and keep credit cards is also harder nowadays. Nowadays, lenders granting credit cards has become more stricter and are doing all sorts of measure to reduce risks. Due to the financial crisis, not only did banks tighten the way they grant credit, but they also devised lots of schemes to get revenues as much as they can.
Credit limits were also cut for millions of people. An estimated $1 trillion amount of available credit is said to have been eliminated by doing this. California and Florida are two states that were the most subjected to credit limit cuts because of the mortgage crisis and high unemployment rate.
Most credit card providers are now sending credit card solicitations only to those they know are good candidates. Compared to year 2000 up to 2008 which had an average of 2.3 billion solicitations, only a quarter of this figure have been recorded in 2009.
The new law has provided a few restrictions too and getting around these restrictions will be part of many lenders’ strategies. This is an additional factor why banks will be more reluctant to issue credit cards especially to those who have low credit ratings and low FICO scores. Credit card offerings will be more likely targeted to individuals who have a good credit score or have other banking activities such as savings accounts.
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