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Comment by Pharylon | Hacker News Reader

With all their bad press, I'm actually kind of surprised anyone would purposely open an account with them right now. I'm not even up-to-date on whatever crap they're pulling today, but they're on my mental list of "companies I keep hearing bad things about".

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When I tried to open a bank account having just moved to the UK, Barclays wanted me to wait two weeks for an appointment. HSBC had me signed up with money in my account on the same day. My debit card worked in a week.

I have an HSBC account because I have a presence in multiple countries and keeping everything consolidated is surprisingly convenient.

I have an HSBC account because at the time I moved to the Uk (2004) they had a mechanism in place so you could set it up as part of the application process. I don't remember the details but it was standard for everyone to just do it all before leaving NZ.

I bet a lot of people are in a similar position. Not that I really use the account now, I have a far happier time in my Barclays account. I actually have a real hate for HSBC.

They offered competitive rates for online checking and savings accounts about a decade ago, which is what captured my attention. I moved all of my finances over to a credit union a few years ago, but have left my HSBC accounts open because closing them may negatively impact my credit (which is ludicrous). I have a combined two cents in my HSBC accounts; I move the pennies around every few months to avoid being shut down for inactivity.

If you're talking about a checking or savings account, you can safely close it without it affecting your credit score.

Closing a credit account could affect your score, but unless your checking account has a credit product attached (e.g. an overdraft protection line of credit) that gets reported to credit reporting agencies, it won't have any impact.

You can use https://annualcreditreport.com once per year to get a copy of your report from each of the three agencies (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion). If your HSBC account doesn't show up on any of those reports, you can be assured that closing it won't affect the scores generated from those reports.

I doubt closing a credit account hurts your score. Even if it does, you'd be more credit worthy to a lender because you have less credit outstanding/available. And the credit score can improve later if other credit is operating normally.

Credit score is only one item they look at for large loan like a mortgage. Smaller loans like a car or credit cards are already easy to get.

Credit scores depend in part on the ratio of your credit balances vs. available credit. So in that sense, closing an account can reduce your credit score since you now have less available credit.

I don't know how much impact it has, certainly less than late payments or accounts in collections, but it can have some effect.

It certainly can hurt your score. One small but real component is the average age of account.

Also, ratio of credit used to credit available is also a negative signal, which would increase when you close an account.

Those are somewhere between minor and middling factors. It's stupid we have to play the stupid credit score game, but a small decrease in interest rates can save you thousands when it comes to your mortgage.

Oh gosh, that's a tough lesson to learn. We don't select business banks on the basis of fee competitiveness we select them based upon customer service. The two appear to have an inverse correlation. Funny thing is, the banks with low fees IME make it up in the "small print" fees.

Two things I don't bargain hunt for anymore: Insurance, and Banks.

Closing a bank account affects your credit score negatively for about 3 months. Hardly worth worrying over.

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