How does a CLI affect scores?

[gpie00001]

Hey everyone,

On March 23, I got a hefty CLI on my 1st Financial Bank USA card (everyone seems to dislike them - I've had no problems, but I digress), taking me from $9500 to $11,000! I was very excited about this (especially since it was a soft pull), but am wondering if this will increase my credit score. I have Scorewatch, but don't really see any option that would notify me if I get any kind of CLI. Since this happened just a few weeks ago, I don't think it would show the new CL on my reports yet (I have not bought my scores in about a month, so I'm just speculating).

So how will this affect me? My utilization was not really affected by this - I was and still am around 4% util. Does a CLI alone improve scores?

Thanks for any help you can give! 

[Anonymous]

If this had affected your EQ FICO, Scorewatch would have alerted you.

Unless you had higher utilization than 10% and your CLI helped reduce it, then no, this will not really affect your score.

FICO will mostly look at utilization, number of balances and account age data.

[Anonymous]

A CLI can decrease your util.  But since your's was low to begin with, probably won't have much impact. 

The CLI impact will depend on which bucket you are in as well.  If you are in the bankruptcy bucket, it would probably have a greater impact.  The impact will also depend on the amount of the increase.  If your total avail credit went from $5k to 10k then of course that would have a big impact on your util, But if your util is already low, sorry no score increase.  But it is a good thing that you got a CLI, especially in this economy.  Congrats. 

[gpie00001]

Thanks for the replies! I would have loved to see a jump in my scores (they've been about the same for the past couple of months), but nevertheless, I'm still very excited about the CLI.