Here ' s my thinking if you have a bunch of inquiries for credit and you ' re going to a bank to get a loan , they won ' t really matter . I realize the bank probably sees you as an elevated risk , but say you have 20 cards but an absolute perfect credit history . Wouldn ' t that show you as a more dependable borrower ? The problem with this line of thinking is that it assumes that you will maintain your perfect credit history , continue making on time payments on those 20 cards and don ' t decide to max them out and leave the bank fighting with other lenderscredit extenders in bankruptcy . The bank has to look at it from a potential risk perspective and the potential risk is that you end up with assuming you have $ 150 k in available credit across those 20 cards $ 150 k in credit card debt . You then stop paying on the bank loan , as well as on those cards and then it becomes a battle of who attaches to what property first , who gets how much on the dollar in bankruptcy , etc . The fact that you have 20 open accounts in the past 2 years also tends to indicate to bank algorithms that you may be desperately trying to get money . While you may simply be opening cards to get the bonus , many more open the cards because they need an extra credit line to make ends meet . While you certainly may be able to offset this by explaining to the banker that you take advantage of the signup bonus deals , the banks are still going to perceive all of that open credit and recent requests for additional credit as a risk that they have to factor in . So while your perfect credit history may be an indicator that you are likely to pay , the high number of open credit accounts can impact the bank ' s risk algorithm when deciding whether to extend you the loan .