Did EQ get a new version of the FICO formula recently? Something strange happened.

[Anonymous]

I am not sure if I hit a new bucket or if the formula changed due to an upgrade? I have right in front of me 2 EQ FICO calculators (on EQ website). One under my Score Power history and a new one I just bought from Score Power. When I punch numbers in to both I get different % for UTL and scores.

I found this "really strange". First I thought maybe I made a mistake, then I put them side by side, punched in the same % for UTL and got 2 different score predictions. That can be explained by other factors that may have increased my score, BUT the % for UTL is at different break points.

Does anyone have any ideas? I was thinking maybe they got an upgrade from Fair Isaacs in relation to the FICO software/hardware. Or buckets effect scores differently? I am at a loss to explain this.

[smallfry]

How much difference are you seeing? 10 or 20 points? I don't hold much stock in those calculators anyway. EQ doesn't get the FICO 08 till next year anyway. Experian rolls it out sometime next month. I am anxious to see my October Experian score.

[Anonymous]

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@smallfry wrote:
How much difference are you seeing? 10 or 20 points? I don't hold much stock in those calculators anyway. EQ doesn't get the FICO 08 till next year anyway. Experian rolls it out sometime next month. I am anxious to see my October Experian score.

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6 point difference. But that was not the part that struck me as odd. What struck me was the percentages were different to trigger score changes. Some looked to be off by a few percent. Mostly changes were less than half a percent. To me, a FICO fine tuner, that was a big change.

[Anonymous]

The percentages are fluid depending on the average consumer.  The credit scores rate your credit compared to the average consumer.  If the amount of credit card debt drastically falls in thegeneral population, the formula will reflect a new benchmark for utilization.

[MidnightVoice]

Is your score different fore the second purchase?  I am assuming (possibly incorrectly) that the calculator uses the base score of the report from which it came, so if the scores are different the results will be different

[Anonymous]

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@MidnightVoice wrote:

Is your score different fore the second purchase? I am assuming (possibly incorrectly) that the calculator uses the base score of the report from which it came, so if the scores are different the results will be different

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Score was exactly the same. However the FICO calculator was working slightly different for the same exact actions.

[Tuscani]

I will share my theory. The purpose of pools (aka scorecards, buckets, ect.) works out more to the benefit of those with derogs or very little to no history than it does them harm.If there was only one simple bell curve including all credit files then those fortunate, extremely long established folks

would have the whole top half of the score numbers scale absolutely locked up tight.

So where would that leave the person who is only beginning to build a credit history at all? Or who has had some derogs in the past but now is trying to work toward a better CR and score? They would be locked down into the basement of the score range for probably ten, twenty years or more. There's no WAY that that new user or rebuilder individual has as much good history yet as that long established individual does.

So what the pools are attempting to do is to help potential lenders figure out which of the new-credit individuals are showing characteristics which usually go on to blossom into a long clean history, and which other ones don't. The same for rebuilding individuals. By assigning relatively better scores to top of each scorecard and lower scores to the least improved, the individuals who are making progress float to the top. They actually are scoring a bit better than they would if being compared head to head with Mr. Jones who has no derogs whatsoever and has 30+ years of history already.

By trying to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges, that means that amongst the pool of individuals who share certain key history elements, Customer A looks most like someone who will continue to do better and better and is not as likely to default whereas Customer B from the same group is not showing those indicators of steady improvement.

If it weren't for scorecards, IMO, it would be very difficult to get decent mortgages and accounts and loans without thirty years of history already established. That would mean that it would be like climbing an ice mountain barefoot to buy a house or a car or open a credit card before the age of at least forty or fifty.

The pools tend to be split out according to:

-Age of file (length of credit history)
-Thickness of file (number of trade lines)
-Presence of a new account (opened within past X months)
-Presence of seriously negative payment history (90+ days late, charge off, etc.)