SBI Credit Limit Enhancement and Upgrades – Everything You need to know

It’s been a while since I was holding  SBI Simpy Click  credit card. So I was trying to upgrade it to SBI Prime card and finally got it, after chasing for couple of months. I got to know few things while doing this and so this article will help you understand more about SBI’s upgrade and credit limit enhancement process better.

SBI CREDIT LIMIT Enhancement

Before you go with a credit card upgrade, it’s better to request for credit limit enhancement. This is because the premium cards are usually eligible when there is a good credit limit.

How to?

All you need to do is: Login into your account->Benefits->Card Limit Increase

Enter your income details and it’ll show eligible limit. If there is a pre-approved offer, you don’t even need to enter any details, it’ll pop up automatically. If this is not showing up even after 6 months of card opening, upload your income docs and submit using Mailbox->Compose.

You can expect the limit to be increased in 24-48 hrs. It’s pretty fast than I expected.

My Experience:

1. Manual: They gave close to 2X for me on one of my LE application with IT docs. New limit reflects in ~48 hrs. Side note: I’ve also heard someone who got 4X as well. Totally depends on Spends & income.
2. Auto LE: I got exact 50% increase offer on netbanking the second time. Got the limit increased instantly.

SBI Credit Card – Auto Limit Enhancement Confirmation

What’s your experience with SBI CC limit enhancement?

• Also Read: how to increaseyour credit limit

SBI Credit Card Upgrade

SBI says you need to wait upto 6 months to initiate any credit card upgrade or downgrade. If you’ve previously downgraded your card, SBI actually need you to wait for 1 year, even though they mention only 6 months on their FAQ.

How to?

Reach out to customer care and request for the credit card upgrade. Or, you can also use net-banking to request for the same. I prefer Netbanking as there will be a record for you to escalate just incase if it doesn’t go through.

Note: Escalations (both offline & online) don’t usually help with upgrades, at-least in my case. They’ll send the request to an eligibility team and if they deny, it keeps repeating again & again.

Even-though my Limit was good enough with card age being 6 months old post downgrade, my case was running for 3 months and they upgraded it only after 1 Year was completed. That brings me to the next topic!

CIBIL Effect on Upgrade

For some reason or other, SBI opens a fresh account on CIBIL even though you upgrade or downgrade your existing card. This is probably why they don’t want to do upgrade/downgrade in 6 months time.

This is very bad for cardholders because CIBIL will show as if you’ve closed the old card in one year. For ex, I was initially holding SBI Air India Signature Card and downgraded it to SBI Simpyclick and then upgraded to SBI Prime . With most banks, this should show only as one account  on CIBIL, but with SBI, it shows 3 different accounts: 2 closed, 1 open. NOT GOOD!