New York – The stream of credit offers that has filled consumers’ mailboxes in recent years may be slowing just a bit.
Although credit-card issuers and other companies that lend to consumers have escaped the barrage of defaults that mortgage lenders have suffered, they’re nonetheless being more careful about whom they lend to and under what terms.
Some card issuers are raising interest rates, while others are cutting back offers to less credit-worthy customers or lowering credit limits. Personal and auto loans are also going through changes.
Jamie Dimon, the president and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co., told a recent conference with analysts that his bank, one of the nation’s largest card issuers, was cutting back on teaser rates and balance transfers and looking instead to profit from greater growth in existing accounts.
Curtis Arnold, founder of of Little Rock, Ark., said he was seeing “pretty subtle – but significant – changes” in credit-card offerings.
One card issuer, for example, has reduced its introductory period for zero-percent interest from “six months” to “up to six months,” Arnold said. Others are doing away with zero-percent offers and going to teaser rates as high as 5.9 percent, Arnold said.
