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Credit card issuers sent 24% fewer direct-mail solicitations in 2008 than in 2007, according to estimates by Mintel Comperemedia. Card issuers sent 5.9 billion solicitations from January through November of 2008, sent 7.8 billion during the same 11 months in 2007 and sent 8.3 billion during the same period in 2006, reports the Chicago-based division of Mintel International Group Ltd. Mintel reported 11 months, not the full year, because it has not compiled final solicitation estimates for December 2008. "Between the credit crunch and increasing losses, issuers have really scaled back dramatically on the amount of mail they are sending new customers," Stephen Clifford, vice president of financial services at Mintel Comperemedia, tells CardLine. The research firm does not disclose estimated numbers of mailings by individual issuers, but it ranks issuers according to how many mailings they send. JPMorgan Chase & Co. still leads the pack of eight issuers, according to Mintel, but Chase's solicitations were down 21% from January through November 2008 compared with the same period a year earlier. American Express Co., which Mintel ranks second in solicitations for the first 11 months of 2008, sent 3% fewer solicitations than in the previous year. Capital One Bank's mailings dropped by 6%, Bank of America Corp. by 23%, Washington Mutual Inc. (which Chase acquired in September) by 6%, Citibank by 43%, HSBC Finance Corp. by 60% and Discover Financial Services by 19%. The decrease in card solicitations, which has continued every month since Sept. 2007, will level off some time in the next couple of quarters then begin to reverse, predicts Clifford. "I think that as credit card losses peak in 2009, that's about the time we'll see a leveling off of the (decrease in) mail volume," Clifford says. "Card issuers will by then have figured out how to adjust their business models, their credit models, for a new economy."
