@Anonymous wrote:
Does anyone have any insight into how a Amex personal loan is decided?
My FICO 8 was 725 last week according to Amex's free score, and I was offered $8,300 at 11.97%. I have just paid off a few cards, and was waiting to get into the 'very good' category -- which thankfully I seem to have scraped into in this month's update, at 744 as of Saturday.
I go to check the personal loan rate, thinking maybe Amex had taken the category bump into consideration, and the loan they're offering is now $7,800 at the same 11.97% rate.
I have jumped from ~2.6% utilisation to ~4.64% in the past week, so I suspect this may have something to do with it -- but I'm wondering if anyone has something more definitive?
I'm waiting 'til the rate drops to single digits to take out an installment loan for score benefit. According to another thread, it does report as an installment and not just a revolving line like some have suspected, so that's pretty interesting.
I have no idea how they figure the APR and max amount... oddly, my highest pre-approved amounts have usually come when I was using my cards the hardest (and still owed a balance).
As for how the account reports, just to clarify it definitely reports as an installment loan. The account number for the loan "looks" like any other 15-digit Amex account number when you take a close look at your e-paperwork, but it will report as installment.
I can also add that it is not a great alternative for a SSL if your goal is getting a score bump by having an installment loan report. You will get a bump once the loan is nearly PIF (just like with a SSL), but since overpayments don't push the payment date out the bump won't last long.
