Change in FICO Algorithm with the New Year?

[Anonymous]

On 12/26/07 my score was 726. On 1/5/08 it dropped 29 points to 697. This is by far the largest drop ever, however there was no change in any of my accounts, i.e., no increase in balances, or any other negative event. (I have never had any late payments or collection accounts.) Can anyone here provide any explanation, or even informed speculation, for this large drop in my score when no event occurred that triggered it? There were no other major events for many months before this drop, and my FICO score has been in the range of 720 to over 750 for several years. I am wondering if this score drop may have something to do with the global credit crunch, that is, as credit has dried up generally, perhaps Fair Isaac reconfigured their algorithm after the New Year and my FICO score dropped along with a lot of other peoples'.

[Anonymous]

Which CRA?

Do you have a lot of authorized user accounts?

Do you have installment accounts (car, personal loan, etc) that are relatively new?

Yes, there is a new model, called FICO-08, was supposed to come out in Sept 2007, Experian was first.  But according to what I am seeing, it is not out yet.

[haulingthescoreup]

Hi, gumshoe --has either your average credit age or overall credit history age changed any, as in increased one year? It almost sound as though you had moved into a new score bucket. We are all grouped into "buckets" (scorepools, scorecards, etc.) with others with similar characteristics, such as how long we've had credit, whether we've had a bankruptcy, whether we had many accounts on our reports or few, and so forth. When your profile changes, and you move into a score bucket, your scores may temporarily drop, because you're being measured against a new set of credit peers.

This happened to me in October and I had what felt like a pretty brutal score drop, after I added on to my husband's 18-year-old Discover card. I was not a happy camper, but I have since regained the lost points and moved beyond where I was. I was able to tell, because I got a scorewatch alert.

Since nothing else has changed on your reports that you can see, this is one rather obscure possiblity. The easy way to check for age change would be to look at two of your reports, the before and after ones, and look on screen 2 where it tells you your positives and negatives. If account age is addressed, it will show your average age and age of oldest account. If either of those figures changed, that might be it. (You can also find the overall credit age on the Credit-at-a-Glance screen.)

That's kind of a wild stab, but so far, no one has found any definite signs that FICO 08 is now in place. I just pulled an EQ score the other day, and my AU account is still being counted for scoring.

[Anonymous]

Hey Hauling - Can we ask Barry or one of the myfico guys to update us on the latest rollout plan?  At least for EX and TU, since EQ won't be playing for awhile.

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

The admins said they do not display/use a new FICO version on myFICO until 50% of lenders are using it.

The TU score on myFICO is still the 2004 version.

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Boscoe wrote:

Hey Hauling - Can we ask Barry or one of the myfico guys to update us on the latest rollout plan?  At least for EX and TU, since EQ won't be playing for awhile.

Thanks.

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[cobra19]

gum - you display all the characteristics of having been bucketed - which is a good thing.

Didn't we hear in Jan. 07, the new model was going to kick in by September 07? And now we are hearing the same thing in Jan. 08.

If I wasn't so cynical, I would think this is just a lot of smoke to get people to remove AU's from their accounts.

[Anonymous]

Re: "has either your average credit age or overall credit history age changed any, as in increased one year?" A: I turned 50 in mid-December. But it's hard to believe that would lead to such a precipitous drop. Again, there were no significant changes shown on the Score Alert: no new accounts, no new inquiries, no significant balance increases, and certainly no major new items like collection accounts, late payments, etc. As for the age of the accounts, all or virtually accounts are very seasoned. Some are more than 15 years old, and the most recent ones are at least a couple years old. None of them changed recently.

[Anonymous]

Gumshoe's problem appears to be the same thing that happen to me. My credit score recently dropped 15 points from 720 to 705 and the only balance increase was a $10 charged on a card I don't use that often that was paid off two weeks later. I hardly see $10 dropping a score 15 points but I am only 24 and my credit history is short. It just feels that I keeping doing everything right and getting punished for little things like this because others in my bucket have credit history of 19 years, that means I would have to have opened my first account when I was 5. Ridiculous expectations!

[Anonymous]

I think we will hear from the AUs when 08 release hits. That the sign I am looking for.

[Anonymous]

I volunteer to be a guinea pig if F.I. wants to run my file through their new scoring model....as long as the tell me what the score is! lol.

I'm absolutely curious to see the effects of FICO08.