Do companies SP you when providing FICO score?

Anonymous · ‎08-02-2016

For those creditors like Amex or Discover among many others that provide you with a FICO score (usually monthly give or take) are they soft pulling you at the time they provide that score or does their score generation not require a SP? If so, I would assume that companies that provide FICO scores then may be using SPs more often than those that don't, which would then mean they are sort of staying more "current" on your proifle that could otherwise be the case. Any thoughts here?

dragontears · ‎08-02-2016

Yes they SP you, how else would they be able to give you a score?

Anonymous · ‎08-02-2016

^ Exactly.

Even credit card companies that don't provide you scores are routinely soft-pulling you to check in on your credit health.

All lenders/credit card companies are allowed to soft-pull their account holders anytime they like, for the sake of monitoring a borrower's/account holder's ongoing creditworthiness. Some will use the information to try and get you to explore other products in their line, or to offer you CLIs, or to flag you if they become concerned with something they see, whether for a full account review or just to watch for a while in case they want to reign in your credit limit and thereby their exposure. Some companies publish the scores they get on these pulls to the account holders as an account perk - like Amex and Discover, among others. But even if a given lender doesn't share the information with you, they're still routinely pulling it.

Anonymous · ‎08-02-2016

I'm aware that SPs are common for all lenders, I've just noticed that some often have spans of months that lapse between their SPs. I've gone 3-4 months without a Capital One SP for example where if Amex and Discover are providing me with a FICO score monthly, they are "checking in" on my profile every single month.

For some, this could either be a good thing or a bad thing I suppose.

For me, I'm looking to request Amex and Discover CLIs in the relative near future... Amex at the end of this month, Discover at the end of next month. It's good to know that they're taking monthly SPs as it gives me a better idea of what they're going to be looking at when I request my CLIs. If I were to request a Capital One CLI there's a chance they could be looking at 3-4 month old data... which may or may not be significantly different depending on the profile.

CreditDunce · ‎08-02-2016

The idea of FICO's open access program was CCC would provide you the same score they pulled for account monitoring. Meaning, CCCs would not be pulling more often. They are just showing you the scores they pull. For example, Amex updates my FICO score three times per month. I assume it is because they are SP'g my EX score three times per month.

Barclay pulls when the CRA notifies them of a change for your score. Or every 2 months if no significant (to them) change. Even without the SPs, they can be confident your CR is not changing due to the monitoring they pay the CRA's.

I am not sure if Discover is using the open access program or not. I believe TU had its own program to provide inexpensive TU-08 scores. I can see CCC's wanting to provide monthly scores for card holders could encourage them to SP every month. However, I am sure they were SP'g more than enough to keep track of your account even before the monthly scores.

Anonymous · ‎08-02-2016

I agree; I mean, generally, dramatic changes to ones score/profile aren't going to happen in 2 or 3 months... but there are situations where it does. Things like a final baddie falling off which could yield a 50-75 point gain. Taking utilization down from a significant amount to next to nothing could result in a large gain as well. These are just 2 examples. In both examples, if the person that just bumped up their score significantly went for a CLI that was based off of old data, there's a very good chance that their result would be less than favorable compared to if that creditor had taken a recent SP post-improvement data.

As you said with Barclay, some creditors will take a SP when a change like this happens. Others though, (Capital One keeps coming to mind, at least for me personally) don't seem to take those regular SPs that you know you're getting with creditors that provide monthly or quicker FICO scores.

takeshi74 · ‎08-03-2016

@Anonymous wrote:
For those creditors like Amex or Discover among many others that provide you with a FICO score (usually monthly give or take) are they soft pulling you at the time they provide that score or does their score generation not require a SP?

A score cannot be generated without pulling report data. The scoring model can't divine the score. It needs the data.

@Anonymous wrote:
If so, I would assume that companies that provide FICO scores then may be using SPs more often than those that don't, which would then mean they are sort of staying more "current" on your proifle that could otherwise be the case. Any thoughts here?

The score alone doesn't tell you that. Creditors that don't provide scores can certainly SP more often. A creditor may SP more often if there is concern with one's report(s). Part of your assumption is correct but the other part is a logical fallacy. Creditors that provide scores SP at least as often as they provide scores, however, creditors that do not provide scores are not necessarily SP'ing less often.

Anonymous · ‎08-03-2016

@takeshi74 wrote:
The score alone doesn't tell you that. Creditors that don't provide scores can certainly SP more often. A creditor may SP more often if there is concern with one's report(s). Part of your assumption is correct but the other part is a logical fallacy. Creditors that provide scores SP at least as often as they provide scores, however, creditors that do not provide scores are not necessarily SP'ing less often.

I never said that; there is no "logical fallacy" anywhere in what I said. If you read my post completely you would see that I used another one of my creditors as an example (Capital One) that has gone periods of 3-4 months without soft pulling me. They do not provide a FICO score monthly. I'm fully aware that some creditors that do not provide a FICO score still may be soft pulling monthly or often; Capital One was just one example that (for me) doesn't seem to pull often for whatever reason. The point of my post was to suggest that those creditors that are soft pulling often are obviously accessing the most recent version of ones profile... which, again, can be "good" or "bad" based on if anything significant has changed recently.

If my profile improved dramatically 2 months ago due to a final baddie falling off or for some other reason which resulted in a 50 point increase, I'd feel much better requesting a CLI from Amex or Discover that SPd me in the last month and consequently is seeing that new (improved) profile data rather than Capital One that would use a SP from 3-4 months ago where my scores were 50 points less.