Applying for Amex using household income instead of personal income

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auriga

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Has anyone applied for Amex using household income?
I saw on the Amex website, stating household income requirements, rather than personal income.

I am not working, so I would like to look at applying using my partner's income.
Just wondering if anyone has any similar experience?
 
Has anyone applied for Amex using household income?
I saw on the Amex website, stating household income requirements, rather than personal income.

I am not working, so I would like to look at applying using my partner's income.
Just wondering if anyone has any similar experience?


Every application has a space for your own income and your household income. If your personal income was the same as your household income the figure would be the same.

But, for many, the household and personal income would be different. Therefore every person that has applied for an AMEX card that has listed 2 different figures has effectively applied by using the household income.

Certainly this is my experience in applying for the AMEX Explorer recently.
 
Has anyone applied for Amex using household income?
I saw on the Amex website, stating household income requirements, rather than personal income.

I am not working, so I would like to look at applying using my partner's income.
Just wondering if anyone has any similar experience?

Just signed my wife up for the Amex Qantas Ultimate card. She's working part time and was well below the 65k requirement. Our household income is over the 65k. She was approved no worries.
They requested only her payslips but I sent both hers and mine, don't know if this helped.
 
I find this a bit curious tbh. As far as risk and recovery is concerned, if I sign up utilising my wifes income in any way ... whats the point? Amex can't reach out, through me, into my wifes wallet, they have no right whatsoever to arbitrarily ascribe costs due by me to a third party who isn't part of the agreement but is essentially just 'someone I know who has money' :) :) :)
 
I find this a bit curious tbh. As far as risk and recovery is concerned, if I sign up utilising my wifes income in any way ... whats the point? Amex can't reach out, through me, into my wifes wallet, they have no right whatsoever to arbitrarily ascribe costs due by me to a third party who isn't part of the agreement but is essentially just 'someone I know who has money' :) :) :)

Not sure what your concern is.

I don't believe AMEX ever suggested that your wife was acting as a guarantor for your credit card.

Every financial institution has a different application process and different procedures for assessing your application. AMEX uses household income.
 
Not sure what your concern is.

I don't believe AMEX ever suggested that your wife was acting as a guarantor for your credit card.

Every financial institution has a different application process and different procedures for assessing your application. AMEX uses household income.


Oh, its not a concern, just as I said, curious. I wonder what their thought process is here, not that it matters.
 
Oh, its not a concern, just as I said, curious. I wonder what their thought process is here, not that it matters.

AMEX is very successful for many reasons.

I'd assume that using household income as a measure of assessment is going to bring in more potential customers than simply using personal income.

Clearly the strategy is working.
 
Oh, its not a concern, just as I said, curious. I wonder what their thought process is here, not that it matters.

Amex are primarily concerned with the ability to repay.

So if the applicant has a high household income, despite having a low personal income, Amex is comfortable that the card will be repaid.

It is this same thought process which is why they so heavily push supplementary cards.


Ditto as to why getting new Amex cards is so easy for existing Amex cardholders. If you have a good record or meeting repayments that is more important to Amex than income. So getting new cards is easy.
 
I find this a bit curious tbh. As far as risk and recovery is concerned, if I sign up utilising my wifes income in any way ... whats the point? Amex can't reach out, through me, into my wifes wallet, they have no right whatsoever to arbitrarily ascribe costs due by me to a third party who isn't part of the agreement but is essentially just 'someone I know who has money' :) :) :)
There is a lot of data out there about lending patterns and the bank rely heavily on these in profiling credit risk, in that they look at a number of factors and have statistical evidence of which one help them in assessing risk. As an example you might think having a mortgage means you have greater financial commitments and hence are less likely to pay other loans but the data says differently.

Similarly there is a (inverse) relationship between household income and failure rates. You may well be correct that in theory Amex can't access a spouses money but the evidence is quite strong that if there is money in the household spouses do feel some sense of commitment to help their partner out with their debts. I may be wrong as to the motive, but what I am very sure of is that lenders look at a number of indicators to assess peoples ability to pay, if there is a correlation they will include this in their assessment. And household income is one of these factors.
 
Every financial institution has a different application process and different procedures for assessing your application. AMEX uses household income.

Amex are primarily concerned with the ability to repay.

So if the applicant has a high household income, despite having a low personal income, Amex is comfortable that the card will be repaid.

It is this same thought process which is why they so heavily push supplementary cards.


Ditto as to why getting new Amex cards is so easy for existing Amex cardholders. If you have a good record or meeting repayments that is more important to Amex than income. So getting new cards is easy.

There is a lot of data out there about lending patterns and the bank rely heavily on these in profiling credit risk, in that they look at a number of factors and have statistical evidence of which one help them in assessing risk. As an example you might think having a mortgage means you have greater financial commitments and hence are less likely to pay other loans but the data says differently.

Similarly there is a (inverse) relationship between household income and failure rates. You may well be correct that in theory Amex can't access a spouses money but the evidence is quite strong that if there is money in the household spouses do feel some sense of commitment to help their partner out with their debts. I may be wrong as to the motive, but what I am very sure of is that lenders look at a number of indicators to assess peoples ability to pay, if there is a correlation they will include this in their assessment. And household income is one of these factors.

Supplementary cardholders are included on card insurance so that in the event of the cardholders death or serious accident, there are funds to pay the final balances.

burmans is correct there are many external factors which contribute to the internal amex credit worthiness scoring.
Items which contribute include: -

- Where you live and ownership status (median HH income for that area, also amex can see if you own/rent that property)
- Where you live is also an indicator for job security, there are numerous studies which show low employment in areas which are not as highly connected via roads and public transport.
- Telco meta-data can be up to 50% more effective in determining credit worthiness than historical banking data at a transaction level. Some European telcos make as much as 16% of their revenue by *selling your data* to third party corporations.
(further reading: http://mitsloan.mit.edu/media/Lo_ConsumerCreditRiskModels.pdf and http://alo.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ML_FAJ_FINAL_003.pdf)
- Personality data also factored into the equation. Repayments are all about trust - ie: the bank trusts you will repay it. Some types of people have lower trustworthiness and therefore represent a slightly higher credit risk.
- Much much more

It also wouldn't surprise me if QF and VA were selling member data to banks to assist with credit applications.

Payslips are totally redundant these days, especially as we move to a data-driven society.

Veda scores only address the 'how much revolving credit does this person have', and anyone in data science will tell you this is only a minor factor in assessing true credit worthiness.
So while Veda is useful for banks now - their power will greatly reduce over the coming years until they move to a credit holding body. Eg: Veda wants to become the credit body where instead of individual institutions assigning you a credit limit, your personal limits are held with Veda, and you can carve it up and assign different limits to individual credit providers. So you may have 100K revolving credit available and assign 20K to an ANZ card, 20K to Citi etc. In this sense, you will be able to switch your credit from one provider to the next.

The next few years will be interesting.
 
. Repayments are all about trust - ie: the bank trusts you will repay it.

I am of the view that data is becoming increasingly important, and that furthermore, as data tools continue to evolve that one's data footprints that you are leaving today will be soon be examined in ways that are not yet possible.

So personally I am prudent with the data footprints that I leave now as data tools will increasingly be used to vet and "judge" you.
 
I am of the view that data is becoming increasingly important, and that furthermore, as data tools continue to evolve that one's data footprints that you are leaving today will be soon be examined in ways that are not yet possible.

So personally I am prudent with the data footprints that I leave now as data tools will increasingly be used to vet and "judge" you.

Yes, totally agree. Also, sometimes, it's not about the data you do provide, but rather what peripheral insight the company can extract from that data.
For example: Did you know Cathay Pacific knows how much alcohol you drink (you, as an individual). Do you use Qantas Assure? Pretty much your whole life data is being fed into the QF engine. All that mail you receive in the post... do you think Australia Post isn't tracking who is receiving what? Some more examples of how it's being used at https://www.traveldatadaily.com

The big data industry is huge. No doubt there will be anti-big data security type apps which pop up this year designed to help you reclaim some privacy by feeding outlier data into the engines.

Sometimes I feel companies should be paying users and not the other way around.
 
Has anyone applied for Amex using household income?
I saw on the Amex website, stating household income requirements, rather than personal income.

I am not working, so I would like to look at applying using my partner's income.
Just wondering if anyone has any similar experience?

Applied for AMEX qantas ultimate but have not heard back yet. Also applied for Westpac Black and I think it only gave the option for personal income. It had "other" income but I think that was more investment type income. I was under the required 75k personal but added my wifes income which put me well above it and then sent both our payslips in even though they asked only for mine. Have been approved so far. The last thing they asked for was if my salary went into a StGeorge/BankSA/Melbourne account. If Yes then don't need to send anything else.
 
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