As listed above, does having a banking relationship have any positive effect on helping in your CC application, especially when you are one of those "borderline cases" (e.g. too short credit history, too many recent inquiries, etc...)

It really depends on the bank. It is more likely to help with credit unions and small community banks than with the largest national issuers.

Not really. If a credit card company can make a buck off you, they will. Most don't care where you do your banking

I agree with Redhead. Many of the companies run the bank separate from the credit side so they have little to do with each other aside from the name.

At least at Chase, if you have a personal banker (i.e., if you opened a Chase bank account at a branch), they can put in requests for you for credit cards and help with applications and whatnot. I'm guessing they can't do much more than the equivalent of calling the reconsideration line for you—they only ever helped me find missing miles, but they did that well—but if you're looking for any advantage to banking where you charge, I guess that's one.

A banking relationship helps if you have really bad credit and can only get a secured card. You would think that a banking relationship would help for almost everyone but 99% of the time it does not.

On the contrary, at BOA, Chase and other large banks, it's all about cross-marketing products. It most certainly helps if you have a long-standing checking account, your mortgage is serviced by them and they handle your investments and financial advisory services.

Not only will it get a CC approved, but generally at a lower rate and often with the card Fedexed so you have it the next business day.

All of this presuming 800+ credit score. If you're down in the dumps, banks look only at credit risk and that includes -- but don't believe for a moment that it's based solely on -- credit score.

Very well put. Also each Bank has a different risk tolerance. So what may work at one doesn't at another.

With BoA I have classic example - my branch has relationship banker and she has helped couple of my friends get their first credit card who had really thin credit profile - and by thin I mean people with less than 6 months of credit profile.

These cases might be very rare but the relationship banker works with the credit dept. May be there might be something ....

Having worked at a consumer bank for a considerable amount of time and being someone quite familiar with credit requirements and underwriting, I can say that having a banking relationship at the bank you're applying for can help or even hurt you in the application process. Here's why...

1) Opening an account for the sole purpose of "having a relationship" could actually lower your score. Why? Some (most) major commercial banks do a credit inquiry when opening accounts for consumers. This is used to mitigate risk and also track collections and judgements. It is also used to establish pre-approvals for both secured and unsecured credit cards for new/existing customers.

2) If you already have an account somewhere and have ever had a charge off or are a regular overdraft offender, the bank can use your relationship history against you when deciding on credit offerings and even terms if/when approved.

3) If your credit is less than perfect (think 620 or less), a bank might overlook you for an unsecured credit card and offer you a partially secured or even a fully secured card -- especially when they already know what kind of balances you carry in your deposit accounts. That way, they know they can collateralize your credit card and they know if you can afford it.

4) If you've ever had credit products with the bank your relationship is at, there is a higher chance of them using your payment history with them against you when granting you revolving credit (a credit card). If you've had delinquency of mortgages, have done a loan modification, or ever declared Ch. 11, you're likely SOL.

But alas, there is hope (for some). If you have stronger deposit balances in your accounts or have investments/CDs/IRAs with considerable balances, many banks will overlook credit issues when granting revolving credit so as to ensure that they don't jeopardize your deposit relationship and alienate you as a customer. Or, if credit analysts deny your initial credit application, account managers (preferred/premier/private banking) usually have leverage to negotiate with the credit analysts and grant you credit, regardless of FICO score.

Hope that helps!

At least at BofA, when submitting an application for revolving credit, personal bankers have the opportunity to request "special considerations" for card approval. These are then forwarded to higher ranking credit analysts who will call customer directly to discuss terms/approvals/line amounts.

Like someone up thread mentioned, many card companies are separately managed but wholly owned subsidiaries (BofA uses FIA card services and legacy MBNA) of the parent company. Again, relationships can help or hurt you...

2 times it helped me:

1. as a college student, with my college credit union (was getting rejected from BoA, Chase, etc due to lack of credit history and minimal annual income).
2. getting a CC in foreign countries (eg Switzerland)...

If you are talking about co-branded airline cards with substantial signup bonuses the answer is probably none. At best a substantial bankng relationship will get you a telephone number to the "President's Office" which is nothing more than a higher level contomer service group.

So is there any definitive proof that holding a bank account with Chase, Citi, AMEX, etc... will help improve the odds for the borderline cases?

My personal experience with AMEX was that I cancelled my Green Card and applied for the Delta Gold Skymiles. This was when I had less than 2 years of credit history, lots of recent inquiries (about 7 in the last year), but a reasonably good FICO score of 740ish. I dumped about $20k into an AMEX savings account before applying... my Delta Skymiles was not auto-approved, but manually approved (but I did not did to call for reconsideration).

The thing I am trying to figure out is did the $20k AMEX savings helped the decision making process? Cause I was pretty sure I was on the borderline situation...

This brings to question if such a strategy would be effective. For the borderline cases, perhaps open a bank account with the card issuer, and dump in as much money as possible, just before applying for the CC. If having a banking relationship and the amount of money in the bank does affect the CC application, that would be good. After the CC is approved (or rejected), pullout all the money and just leave behind enough to avoid fees, or perhaps close the account altogether (assuming there is no account closure fee).

With a CB score of 740, I wouldn't bother with the relationship.

What you should focus on is DTI and taking note of how much credit you have available and what your utilization ratio is.

If you have many other cards with huge limits and low utilization ratios, you'll fight an uphill battle there since most card issuers will think that you have enough credit available.