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Card limit cuts 'might affect credit worthiness'

Credit cards might become harder to take out in future due to lenders cutting their spending limits, the Daily Mail reports.

In recent weeks, several providers including Goldfish and the Co-op have lowered the maximum amount that can be spent on their cards for some customers.

Egg has also recently cancelled the cards of 161,000 customers following an internal risk review.

Nervousness about the apparent slowdown in the economy is at the root of the lenders' conservatism - and these cutbacks might have negative effects on many consumers' credit-worthiness.

One of the factors that credit reference agencies such as Experian use to measure customer risk is how close expenditure comes to credit limits.

Therefore, with them being lowered, more people might approach these limits without spending anything - a problem which is made more acute by providers not being required to give any notice of these cuts.

Speaking to the newspaper, James Jones at Experian said: 'These changes will show on your credit report and could have implications.

"Lenders can assess this information any way they wish."

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