One account - Multiple lates

[Joteism]

I know how long lates stay on your account and I also know the severity of each type (30, 90, 120 etc.), but what I don't exactly understand is how multiple lates on one account factor into your score. I have a rehabbed student loan that got picked up by the guarantor. The original defaulted loan shows on my report as a negative account in "Pays as agreed" status with $0 balance and ten 120+ lates between 2007-08 (the loan got transferred towards the end of 2008). The transferred loan shows as a positive account with zero balance and all on time payments. 

So my question is - Does every 120+ late count as a separate delinquency? And is this basically equivalent of me having 10 collection accounts on my report? Aside from this negative student loan, I have no other baddies on my report. I also don't seem to have hit a ceiling on my score yet - I'm currently at 714 EQ/709 TU FICO with 26% util on total available credit (zero interest for 14 months), so I know I can definitely squeeze another 15-20 points just by paying that off. 

[RobertEG]

Good question, with no real answer that I have seen posted by Fair Isaac.

The specifics of how they score derogs is part of their proprietary scoring algorighm.

Two possibilities...

1. each level and type of adverse reporting has its own separate impact, which are then summed, or

2.  scoring is based only on the highest level of derogatory statuts, and takes into account the fact that prior levels of delinquency would necessarily have occured.

Possibility 2 is the only one that makes sense to me, as some prior derogs are often not reported.  The same situation should result in the same scoring, and not be dependent upon what prior derogs were or were not reported.

Just my guess.

[Joteism]

Thanks for the response, RobertEG. 

I too suspect that the second scenario is more likely. But the first 120+ late is set to fall off next month, so I'll report back as to what kind of a difference it makes. 

This was initially listed as a collection account set to fall off June 2014, but figuring that getting it changed to a transferred account would make it look better, I asked ED Financial to update it. They did so about 4 months ago and now I'm worried that it's going to stay on my file for another several years because of the "Pays as agreed" and "Transferred" status. Lesson learned...