When you’re selecting a credit card, you might notice that the duration of some introductory interest rates is advertised as being available for ‘up to’ a certain number of months. That basically means you could be offered the advertised rate, but you could also be offered a shorter duration instead, based on an assessment of your personal circumstances.
Similarly, where a low interest rate is offered as standard with no fixed expiry date, the interest rate itself may vary.
When you apply for a credit card, lenders make decisions about the interest rate and credit limit to offer, based on a number of factors. These include:
Your credit record
Credit reference agencies securely hold information about you and your financial past, issuing you a credit score. Lenders can access this information to support their decisions around offering credit.
Affordability
We’ll assess what we think you can reasonably and sustainably afford to repay, based on things like your income and the total amount of credit that’s already available to you.
Current and past accounts
Lenders usually hold a record of accounts you’ve held with them before, including information about how well they were managed. It follows that, the better your financial position and credit score are, the more likely it is that you’ll be offered a lower introductory or promotional interest rate.
Check your eligibility before you apply
Many lenders now provide an eligibility checker to help you to find and compare cards you’re likely to be accepted for, without impacting your credit score. The Lloyds Bank version is called One Check.