Credit Cards Pose Dangers During Pandemic, Says MET Finance Director

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the lives of everyone. According to Associate Professor Irena Vodenska, people with low credit scores are especially vulnerable. As Vodenska told WalletHub.com, “During an emergency, people’s credits could rapidly deteriorate, not due to irresponsibility or overspending, but rather due to adverse circumstances.”

As MET’s director of finance programs, including the Master of Science in Financial Management, Dr. Vodenska conducts theoretical and applied interdisciplinary research using quantitative approaches for modeling interdependences of financial networks, banking system dynamics, and global financial crises. Addressing the stresses the global pandemic has put on all matters of finances, she added:

While providing very different credit card conditions to good vs. bad credit people might be justifiable in good times, it is a terrible idea in bad times as a global public health crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic. During an emergency, people’s credits could rapidly deteriorate, not due to irresponsibility or overspending, but rather due to adverse circumstances. These two credit deterioration pathways have to be distinguishable. During the Covid-19 pandemic, we need to help the people, not the banks.