How important is building a relationship with your bank?

Question

I have bad credit right now, I’m recently recovered from Alcoholism and starting to get my life back on track. How important is building a good relationship with my bank? Will they offer me a loan after having multiple accounts with them and establishing a line of credit with them? With a credit score of 650?

Scott Mac · Answer

@Rashad Walser

Hi Rasheed,

And no one at the bank will care about your personal struggles. It's all just numbers to them.

And hang in there with combating your demons and getting your life in order.

Good Luck!

James Wise · Answer

Loans are usually sold after they are originated. Gone are the days of personal relationships. Borrowers need to be meet a general level of criteria to be approved. Essentially the underwriters need to check off the boxes to originate a loan that can be sold. So to answer your specific question, not important at all. What you need to do is just continue to work on your credit and debt to income ratio. That's the only thing you can do to sway a bank. That said with a 650 score you shouldn't have a problem getting approved for a conventional or FHA loan so long as your debt to income ratio meets the threshold of acceptability.

Peter Tverdov · Answer

Maybe with a commercial lender but from a conventional loan perspective, I am finding "relationships" to be less and less important. I have multiple loans with one bank and the guy I have spoken to 50 times still butchers my name and talks like he doesn't know who I am (and maybe he hasn't given any effort to learn). Kind of sad to be honest, a lot of banks are basically algo bots.

Rashad Walser · Answer

@Scott Mac thanks but “Rasheed” kills me! My name is Rashad. Ra-Sh-Odd

Michael Lee · Answer

Don’t worry. Bank will not evaluate your credit by your personal struggle. They will evaluate you by your occupation, income, property, expense etc. try to keep your record good.

Michael Gansberg · Answer

Hi @Rashad Walser - personal relationships can be valuable. Or they can be worthless. Take the community bank I've borrowed from for almost a decade. After a few loans, I knew most of the higher-ups involved in the loan process, and they knew me by my on-time payment record. Getting loans was fast and streamlined.

Fast forward to 2019. I wanted a loan on a project, so I texted my main contact there, and found out he wasn't there anymore. Nor was anybody else I worked with- everybody, gone in a puff of smoke! The bank had been gobbled up by a larger bank. Now, nobody there has any idea who I am. Sad!

Rashad Walser · Answer

@Peter T. Butchers your name like the guy that butchered mine before your comment 😂😂😂 thanks for the advice.

How important is building a relationship with your bank?

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