It always starts the same way: someone applies for a Chase credit card and is approved. Subsequently, they see their card isn’t working/activating, they are told the card has been closed by Chase. Soon after, they find out that all their cards have been closed out by Chase.
I’ve seen at least five recent data points with virtually this identical story (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 a friend). It seems Chase has a team review recent card applicants. This team works separately from the approval system; they look through recently approved cardmembers to see if any of them are ‘risky’ members. If they are deemed a risk, they shut down all of their Chase credit cards.
The following factors seem to be common among those shut down:
- They had several new credit cards across various banks in a short timeframe.
- They had numerous recent hard pulls showing on their credit report.
It does not seem to be MS related, just cards/inquiries related. In a lot of the cases, they had newish Chase cards as well (besides for the card they had just applied for).
Amex introduced a RAT team, well, maybe we should call Chase’s the BRAT team. Whatever.
Silver Lining
Luckily, we can end on a positive note. Most of the time, it seems that Chase agreed to reopen their accounts upon review when they spoke to the lending department. I’ve seen multiple such reports.
Final Thoughts
The bottom line is that there’s a new animal in the room. Before applying for a Chase card, make sure you’re report is relatively clean. When applying for a Chase card, don’t do other applications the same day, not for other Chase cards and not for cards from other banks. And try applying with a relatively clean report if possible, i.e. you haven’t applied for anything in a few months.
Remember also that card issuers soft pull our credit reports all the time, and it’s hard to say anyone is entirely safe. But the BRAT team seems to be reviewing specifically those who recently got a new Chase card, so that’s where we need extra vigilance.
See our follow-up post Chase Account Freeze due to Financial Review for some more information in the Chase shut down process. We’ll also add this to the list of how to Spare your Credit Cards from Shutdown.
