Authorized User effect on FICO

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know how AUs are considered in FICO scoring models (specifically ‘08)? I was added to my dad’s card as an AU and his account age is 23 years old. This age is displayed on all my reports, credit karma, and Experian’s free report online shows it factored into my AAoA, however the tradeline is not shown on DiscoverScoreboard’s Experian FICO.

On that page my AAoA is much smaller than in other reports and they also don’t count it as part of my total accounts or total util. I was wondering why the report they display not factor in the account. It is reporting to all the CRAs but Discover makes it seem like it doesn’t even exist.

Thank you guys for the help!

[Anonymous]

When did your father's card begin appearing on your reports?  During the month prior to that, what was your oldest account?  What was your CC utilization before and after?  And finally, did you see a score change?

The best way to assess the impact of an AU card on one's score is to look at what the card actually did to one's score, i.e. empirically.  The high level "summary" page of a credit monitoring tool cannot be counted on to reflect what an actual scoring algorithm is doing on the back end.  For example, suppose you had two open accounts that were five years old and one closed account that was 20 years old.  Karma's summary page would tell you that your AAoA was 5, but VantageScore (which powers Karma's scores) would treat it as 10 (counting the closed account).

[Anonymous]

1) began appearing 08/17

2) Oldest Prior Account was 1yr 4 mo old at that point and AAoA was 9 months or so.

3) Util was a slight change from 2-5% before AU to a steady 1-2% after AU.

4) Yes, I saw a score change both on vantage score CK and actual FICO increase. FICO moved up about 15-20 points over the course of 2 months. Vantage shot up 25 points within 1 reporting cycle.


It definitely helped my score and my depth of credit and AAoA is increased, however the Disco scoreboard and Amex FICO both match each month (both from EX) and that leads me to assume that the scoring models aren’t accounting for the AU. I’m not sure, but there was definitely a score change. Just confused as to why the report they show doesn’t even address the AU in any way.

[Anonymous]

The Discover scoreboard is a high-level summary of your report by a third-party tool.  Take a look again at what I said about these kinds of summaries:

The high level "summary" page of a credit monitoring tool cannot be counted on to reflect what an actual scoring algorithm is doing on the back end.  For example, suppose you had two open accounts that were five years old and one closed account that was 20 years old.  Karma's summary page would tell you that your AAoA was 5, but VantageScore (which powers Karma's scores) would treat it as 10 (counting the closed account).

[Anonymous]

Ahh yes I understand that now. Makes sense why the high level summary won’t show the AU. Thanks for the help!