rculater

I mean after a year or 2.

No other US credit cards, loans, phones etc - just a bank account.

Thanks

RICH

Yes. Within a year i got a store card and a credit card with the same bank.
Phone bill/ electric in your name will help. You may need to pay a deposit.

civilservant

I didnt think if it provided no credit facility it would, you live and learn!

If you afford a couple of hundred $ deposit, a secured credit card (Bank of America for example) is much faster.

retzie

Are you sure it was the bank account alone that got your history started, and not the bills? I had a checking account for over 3 years (no bills though) and still got refused a credit card. Admittedly, I was not refused by the same bank, since mine didn't offer them. I eventually kicked things off with a secured card.

Michael

No type of checking, savings, or any other type of bank account even if you have millions on deposit will establish credit. It is only when you borrow money (credit cards or loans) will credit be established since that is the only time banks report payments to credit agencies.

Strangely enough, even if you overdraft a checking account and are late repaying the overdraft or default on the overdraft, that is also not reported to the credit bureaus unless the bank sues and wins a lawsuit. Instead late or delinquent overdrafts are reported to companies such as ChexSystems which makes it very difficult to open a checking account at any bank but does not affect a person's credit.

Even paying utility bills or rent on time does not establish a person's credit since only late or delinquent payments are reported to credit bureaus. It is only when you make a loan that that both on time and late or delinquent payments are reported to the credit bureaus and then credit will be established.

Bob

No.

Utilities also don't bump your score up, they only report delinquent payments.

RICH

The question is about history, not score.

A checking account won't do much for a credit score, but it does establish a history, and will give you a "score" within that bank. A social security number is also a marker for history, but has little bearing on score.

Michael

Maybe if it is a local bank where you know the bank manager, it may help get you get a loan from that bank but otherwise it will have no effect when applying for a loan anywhere if it is a large bank.

Bob

And the history will be blank, because they will have nothing to report.

Though one thing I noticed, there were so many more local small banks in some states, I basically didn't see a national chain bank like BoA at all in Ohio or Indiana until I hit Columbus/Indianapolis.

Including one bank that was a trailer, doubling up as a car wash...

Michael

You have to remember that until 1990, banks could only operate in one state. BOA and Wells Fargo operated in California and Chase, Citi Bank, and Bank of New York Mellon in New York. Outside of those banks, all the other banks in the US were pretty small since the population of most other states couldn't support even one large bank. Previous to 1990, the name First National was common in many states but all were separately owned.

During the 1990's, new larger banks (Washington Mutual, Wachovia, Countrywide, First Interstate Bancorp, Norwest, and others) appeared on the scene but were really just banks that were primarily buying up smaller banks in different states. In the 1990's, Wells Fargo got the big prizes purchasing both First Interstate Bancorp and Norwest while the others had to struggle buying up smaller banks to expand across state lines. During the credit crisis, Chase got the big winner with the purchase of Washington Mutual, Wells Fargo got Wachovia, and BOA got Countrywide. Bank of New York Mellon hasn't acquired many banks across state lines and has remained fairly small. US Bancorp, Capital One, and PNC became big (but small compared to the other banks) during the 1990s acquiring small banks and are the few larger banks that have remained independent.

Other large banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are not really commercial banks but pretended they were to gain access to the Fed's discount window during the credit crisis.

So with about 8 banks looking to purchase smaller banks to expand nationally, there isn't such a bank as a national bank since some banks already own most of the banks in some states and the larger banks want a major presence in a state and usually won't buy just a few smaller banks except in major cities. Therefore all the major banks are missing a presence in large parts of the US.

Pulaski

Norwest bought Wells Fargo in 1998, not the other way around; the aggressor bank then took the name Wells Fargo. In the same year Nationsbank bought Bank of America; the aggressor bank then took the name Bank of America. In 2002 First Union bought Wachovia; the aggressor bank then..... took the name Wachovia. When it comes to bank mergers there is often more to the story than simply looking at the surviving name after a merger.

Bank of New York shed its branch network about 8-10 years ago, selling most if not all of the branches to JP Morgan Chase. Then in 2006, after some time looking for a new CEO, it merged with Mellon Bank, apparently primarily to "acquire" Mellon's CEO Bob Kelly. Mellon had already shed its branch network, selling it to RBS Citizens Bank. Bob Kelly was later fired, apparently after showing too much interest in becoming Bank of America's CEO, a role he did not win, and after Bank of New York Mellon fired him he has disappeared without trace.
The Federal Reserve prohibits a bank from growing above 10% market share of the national deposit base, and therefore Bank of America, JPM Chase, and Wells Fargo are "out of the bank merger business".

Although Citibank is one of the three largest banks, almost half its business and profits are outside the US, so Citibank could purchase another US bank, probably any US bank other than BoA, JPMChase or Wells Fargo because there is a massive gap between Wells Fargo, the nation's fourth largest bank, and US Bank, the fifth largest. (I think by most measures Wells is about twice as big as US Bank.)

Once the economy gets on a more sound footing there are some major bank mergers likely between the super-regional banks that are far from having a coast-to-coast presence, such as Suntrust which is big in the south east, RBS Citizens Bank in New England and the upper midwest and as far south as DC, PNC based in Pittsburgh, and Comerica in Texas with branches in multiple states as far north as Michigan. Foreign banks such as Santander in Spain and TD Bank in Canada may seek to expand further by buying up other banks.

Michael

I believe that Norwest and First Union could have been the aggressor since Wells Fargo was very small compared to BOA in California and First Union was probably bigger than Wachovia.

However it seems hard to believe that Nationsbank grew so fast from nothing in 12 years to exceed the assets of BOA (BOA was the largest bank in the US in the 1980s). The aggressor normally has to have more assets than the acquired bank unless the acquired bank is financially hurting and that was not the case with BOA in 2002.

Pulaski

I'm glad to hear you "believe" it, because that was factually what happened in both cases! I am not sure where you're getting your facts ("grew so fast from nothing in 12 years" ), but the original charter for Nationsbank dates from 1874, and Nationsbank purchased Bank of America in 1998 after a dramatic period of expansion and mergers in the late 1980's and into the 1990's. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NationsBank

As further support of this fact, Bank of America's headquarters moved from San Francisco (pre-merger) to Charlotte, NC, to the Nationsbank HQ building. It is extraordinary for banks to move their headquarters between states except during a merger; Comerica being such an exception that moved it's HQ from Michigan to Texas.

coxinio

I was with HSBC in the UK and opened an account with them in the US, supposedly they can transfer some of your credit history form your acitivy with them in the UK.

I've not had any issues whilst we've been here, we purchase pretty much everything on the credit card and pay it off in full once or twice a month which seems to have helped us build things up quickly.

Michael

During the early 1980s, federal law was changed to allow banks to cross state lines to acquire failing banks but not healthy banks to allow the FDIC to sell failed S&L banks. It wasn't until the early 1990s that federal law was changed to require all states to allow banks to cross state lines to acquire any bank.

It appears that NationsBank was aggressive in purchasing failed banks across state lines during the 1980s and merged with healthy banks in the early 1990s and BOA did not allowing NationsBank to catch up to BOA. I suspect BOA waited too long looking to acquire a large healthy bank that acquired healthy small banks.