Care to increase your credit line?

Quite a few condominiums and housing projects are enticingly affordable, and some are made more appealing by eye-catching offers from banks and credit card operators. With the year-end bonus arriving in a few months, this could be a wise investment to make. 
Putting a down-payment on a credit card could such an the investment even more financially worthwhile, as the air miles and reward points accrued will be huge. However, with such a big transaction, your credit limit could be an obstacle.
Anyone applying for a first credit card may find they are given a credit limit of Bt100,000 or less. With regular expenses like food, gas, groceries, instalments on your car and other necessities, this available spending power can seem meagre.
Is this credit line actually too low? How do banks justify it?
When you apply for a credit card, your bank will calculate your credit limit according to Bank of Thailand regulations, which say it should be approximately three times your monthly income. Once your credit card profile is generated in the system, the credit line will remain the same until further notice.
Therefore, even after an annual salary raise or extra earnings from new income sources, your credit limit will not automatically be adjusted. An even more vexing situation occurs when sometimes your friends receive a credit line increase without making a request, while yours remains unchanged.
Why is that so? And what can you do about it?  
Banks or credit card operators do want to encourage their members to spend more.  Therefore, offering a bigger credit line certainly makes card members feel more privileged and tempts them to spend more. The card then gains a higher “share of wallet”, or becomes a favourite. Why would a customer want to carry several cards if one card does it all?
From time to time, instead of spending more money on attracting new customers (who may, after all, fail to generate any more revenue), banks will spend more money on the cards, by identifying customers who qualify for an increased credit line, which can be bumped up by as much as 20 per cent.
Unfortunately, card members with clean records will not always be granted an additional credit line.
But the good news is that you can take care of that problem yourself. 
If you think your credit limit deserves a permanent increase, you can contact the bank directly and ask for something higher than the standard 10 per cent emergency increase by providing valid evidence of higher income, like your latest pay slips. By doing so, your new credit line will permanently be in accordance with your latest income level.
So, your dream abode might be closer than you realised… Just a phone call away, in fact.

Janejit Ladpli is vice president of the Travel & Leisure Marketing Division, Krungthai Card (KTC).