A few readers pointed me to this reddit thread that discusses a Citi application rule I haven’t seen discussed before. The “rule” seems to be as follows:
- You won’t be approved for a credit card if you have six or more inquiries on the credit report that Citi pulls for your application.
- If they pull multiple credit bureaus, they’ll judge this based on the report that has the least amount of inquiries
- If you’re denied, you can get them to pull another credit bureau with less inquiries on it.
Contents
Data Points
This doesn’t seem to be a new rule. Here are some data points:
Agree with “rule”
Don’t agree with “rule”
Our Verdict
I don’t think this is really a hard rule, it seems that Citi will use this for a reason to deny accounts though when other factors might also be in play. Citi won’t approve you with a frozen report, but if they cite too many recent inquiries you can call reconsideration and ask them to pull a different credit report instead. Keep in mind the other Citi rules:
- Maximum of one Citi personal application per eight day period
- No more than two applications per 65 day period
- No more than one business application per 95 day period
- You won’t receive the sign up bonus if you’ve opened/closed a card within that family/brand in the last 24 months
Feel free to share your data points in the comments. Just remember this is based on the number of inquiries on the credit report that Citi pulled for you and not total inquiries across all three consumer reporting agencies. Read here on how to monitor your credit for free.
