I acquired a HSBC Combined card while as a student and I found the bank help and couteous. The card does not carry an annual fee or other charges but neither does it offer any benefits.
Differ from many other cards, HSBC does not automatially increase the credit limit on the card even though you have good payment history unless you asked for it. This is not good as you will need the credit limit in order to move on to HSBC gold card which will offer better benefits. Therfore, one should really ask for credit limit incease every six month even though you don't need the extra credit. Citing "more flexibility" is usually a good enough reason.
Any problem with this card is that the bank is not very diligent in reporting one's (good) credit performance to the credit reference agency. Therefore, after 3 years as a student and pay back every single monthly payment ontime, one STILL has a blank credit history and will have difficulty in obtaining credit else where ! They don't even report the performance on a gold card account unless specifically asked to do so.
Therefore, it might be useful to get another card besides HSBC combined card such as Halifax Card in order to build up your credit record while one is still in the university. If you decided not to use the Halifax card, leaving it in £1 credit would be a good way to do so.
An article about credit scoring which I hope will be useful to Ciao members can be found at http://www.mycoupon.freeuk.com/creditscoring.htm I have decided to keep it offsite so that it can updated more easily.
Oct 28th, 2001
exceptional by (6%):
very helpful by (78%):
helpful by (17%):
