Andrew Kahr

Andrew Seth Kahr was the founder and CEO of First Deposit Corp, which later became known as Providian, and was acquired by Washington Mutual in 2005.

Andrew Kahr got his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1962 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His thesis was "A Minimal Reduction Class for the Entscheidungsproblem". [cite web|url=http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/html/id.phtml?id=63430 |title=Andrew Seth Kahr entry|work=The Mathematics Genealogy Project]

Class action lawsuit

In a 1999 cardholder class-action lawsuit against Providian, 12 internal company documents were obtained by "The San Francisco Chronicle". [cite news|url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/05/05/MN138910.DTL|title=How Providian misled card holders|first= Sam|last=Zuckerman|work=The San Francisco Chronicle|date=2002-05-05]

In a July 1998 memorandum to David Alvarez and Dawn Greiner, Kahr urged the company not to tell customers that some credit cards don't have "grace periods," a limited time for paying off balances before finance charges kick in. And in a September 1998 memo to marketing executive Greg Pacheco, Kahr suggested how to promote a for-fee cardholder buyers club program that in most cases offered tiny 1% rebates at selected stores: "A 1% rebate is a 'discount on everything you buy.' We could easily make that discount 'up to 30%' just by randomly or systematically giving a few customers a big rebate."

In a September 1998 memo to Mehta, Kahr advised calculating the credit protection charge as a percentage of the customer's credit line:"The (credit protection) fee can be denominated at 9.8 cents per hundred dollars of line, or whatever, and this has the additional merit of making the $96 go away from the disclosure box." The recommendation was underlined and the notation "excellent suggestion," followed by the CEO's initials, was penned in the margin.

Publicity

For his role in forming the credit card business, he was interviewed by the PBS "Frontline" documentary "Secret History of the Credit Card". [cite web|url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/etc/script.html|title="Secret History of the Credit Card" transcript|work=Frontline|publisher=WGBH] He claims to have introduced the two percent minimum monthly payment in the credit card business (as opposed to the usual five percent), as well as the idea of a zero percent financing introductory rate in mass mailings and solicitations.

Although Providian was prominently mentioned in "Secret History of the Credit Card", Kahr's specific connection to Providian as its founder was not mentioned at all, possibly as a provision of his agreement to be interviewed, previously mentioned therein.Fact|date=July 2008

References

External links

*cite serial|url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/|title=Secret History of the Credit Card|series=Frontline|serieslink=Frontline (US TV series)|network=PBS|station=WGBH|city=Boston|airdate=2004-11-23|transcripturl=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/etc/script.html (episode available online)