Did I get rebucketed ?

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone,

My FICO scores currently from 3B monitoring (CreditCheckTotal) as of writing today

TU - 738

EQ - 729

EX - 729

Three days back my scores were

TU - 762

EQ - 764

EX - 760

which means the drops in my scores are 24 pts , 35 pts and 31 pts in TU , EQ, EX respectively . 

What has changed in my credit profile in the last three days ? NOTHING !!!

Lets get down to specifics . My credit profile  : I have 8 credit cards with total credit limits reaching 40K  . I have Chase,BofA , Barclays , AMEX , Discover .... some of them prime cards .. I believe. I also have a car loan (6K) since last July and I have paid of 75 % of the loan already . I am so far ahead that my next loan payment is due only in 2017 . In 2014 alone I had lot of auto inquiries TU -16 , EQ & EX - 8 , several of them for auto loan... Since January 2015, I dont have any more inquiries ... No derogatories ever...

With all my cards reporting , My revolving balance has been 300$ for the last 10-15 days .. Out of 8 cards ... 3 of them report balance at present ... Utilitzation on those cards are less than 10 % . 

Till July 31st, My average age of accounts was 0.9 years and the oldest account was 2.9 years . On August 1st , it changed to 1 yr (AAoA) and 3 yr (oldest) respectively. 

With no CLD on any of my accounts , Am I currently a victim of rebucketing ? Please let me know if any more specifics is needed . 

[Anonymous]

This is a fascinating case history.  Congratulations on such a thorough intropection of your own credit profile.  The fact that you have so carefully looked at every relevant factor suggests that you really understand how FICO scoring works -- and frankly your guess that you have moved into a new scorecard is the only hypothesis I can think of that covers the facts as you have given them.  I am deeply curious to hear what veterans of this site might have to say, in case there is something obvious that occiurs to them that you and I are missing.

While you wait for more experienced hands to chime in, let me say a word to other readers who may not fully understand what you mean by "re-bucketing" and what I mean by "moving into a new scorecard."  (We are using them the same way.)

FICO doesn't confine itself to scoring a person abstractly against all other persons.  It does that to some extent, but it also scores you against people who appear to have a somewhat similar credit profile.  Thus, in the first sense (abstract total score) a guy with a profile 20 years old and no derogs is going to tend to have a much better score than a guy with a profile that is say nine months old (other things being somewhat equal).  But FICO has also discovered that, if it it only scores that way, its model loses some of its predictive power.  Therefore people are also grouped into "scorecards" (what the OP refered to as buckets) -- collection of people who are scored relative to each other.

That's good in a way.  It gives people who have gotten into trouble (some derogs, say) a chance to exhibit extremely sound recent/ongoing behavior and therefore outshine people with similar "dirty" profiles.  Likewise it gives people who's only drawback is being young a chance to be graded against other people with similarly "young" profiles.

But if it does this, it means that at some point a person is going to leave one scorecard and move to another.  At some point you leave Junior High, where you were an AMAZING football player, and you move to the 9th grade, where you are suddenly competing against these ginormous guys.  And so as a high school freshman you find that you are suddenly a LITTLE fish, not a big one as you were a month ago.  And your ability to score on the field is going to be sharply lower -- for a little while.

The good news is that if you keep your head down and keep doing doing the same things that made you good at Junior High football, time will be on your side and you will eventually starting having an age that permits you to compete against the other guys on your team (for team read "Scorecard").

No one knows exactly how FICO structures its scorecards.  Based on a number of past myFICO discussions over the last several years, the guess appears to be that FICO has a couple (?) scorecards for people with derogs and maybe ten (wild guess?) for people with no derogs with a major driver (perhaps not the only one) being the  total age of the profile.  Remember, that's speculation, as far as I have heard nobody knows for sure.  But a possible break down for clean profiles might (?) be: 0-11 months, 12-35 months, 3-5 years, etc. with eventually categories getting bigger (e.g. 15-20 years).

Our OP observes that the only thing that has changed about his profile in the last few days is that his total age went to 36 months and that his AAoA went to 12 months.  Everything else that might explain such a significant drop he's ruled out: no new inquiries in the last several months, no new accounts, no shift in total utilization (which appears to be consistently low, around 1%), no lates, no other derogatories, no closing of an account (e.g. paying off a big loan), etc.

Given that, and given that in the last few days he's just moved into a new integer value for total age, I am inclined to think he's right: he's in a new scorecard, probably one for people  with a total age of 3 - ___ years.  (Guesswork, but reasonable guesswork.)

The good news is that he should see some steady improvement as long as he keeps his head down and focuses on his game (no derogs, keep his CC debt reasonably low, etc.) and allows himself to age, just like the freshman football player.

Note to our OP: I will suggest that the one thing you can do is stop applying for credit cards.  You have eight.  You not need any more.  All you need is three to drive your score.  People get scores in the 830s all the time with three cards.  Indeed, there's a chance that, in your new scorecard, FICO sees such a comparatively young profile with a boatload of cards as a risk.  So allow the total age of your profile and your AAoA to both steadily increase and your score should improve each year in a substantial way.  BTW, great work on having installment loans as well and having paid them down a good deal.

PS.  Can you clarify for us the "date opened" of your most recently opened account?  I assumed that you had not opened one in a while, but looking back over your overview, I do not see that you say this explicitly.  You mention that you have not had inquiries, but that is not always the same thing.

[Anonymous]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

This is a fascinating case history.  Congratulations on such a thorough intropection of your own credit profile.  The fact that you have so carefully looked at every relevant factor suggests that you really understand how FICO scoring works -- and frankly your guess that you have moved into a new scorecard is the only hypothesis I can think of that covers the facts as you have given them.  I am deeply curious to hear what veterans of this site might have to say, in case there is something obvious that occiurs to them that you and I are missing.

While you wait for more experienced hands to chime in, let me say a word to other readers who may not fully understand what you mean by "re-bucketing" and what I mean by "moving into a new scorecard."  (We are using them the same way.)

FICO doesn't confine itself to scoring a person abstractly against all other persons.  It does that to some extent, but it also scores you against people who appear to have a somewhat similar credit profile.  Thus, in the first sense (abstract total score) a guy with a profile 20 years old and no derogs is going to tend to have a much better score than a guy with a profile that is say nine months old (other things being somewhat equal).  But FICO has also discovered that, if it it only scores that way, its model loses some of its predictive power.  Therefore people are also grouped into "scorecards" (what the OP refered to as buckets) -- collection of people who are scored relative to each other.

That's good in a way.  It gives people who have gotten into trouble (some derogs, say) a chance to exhibit extremely sound recent/ongoing behavior and therefore outshine people with similar "dirty" profiles.  Likewise it gives people who's only drawback is being young a chance to be graded against other people with similarly "young" profiles.

But if it does this, it means that at some point a person is going to leave one scorecard and move to another.  At some point you leave Junior High, where you were an AMAZING football player, and you move to the 9th grade, where you are suddenly competing against these ginormous guys.  And so as a high school freshman you find that you are suddenly a LITTLE fish, not a big one as you were a month ago.  And your ability to score on the field is going to be sharply lower -- for a little while.

The good news is that if you keep your head down and keep doing doing the same things that made you good at Junior High football, time will be on your side and you will eventually starting having an age that permits you to compete against the other guys on your team (for team read "Scorecard").

No one knows exactly how FICO structures its scorecards.  Based on a number of past myFICO discussions over the last several years, the guess appears to be that FICO has a couple (?) scorecards for people with derogs and maybe ten (wild guess?) for people with no derogs with a major driver (perhaps not the only one) being the  total age of the profile.  Remember, that's speculation, as far as I have heard nobody knows for sure.  But a possible break down for clean profiles might (?) be: 0-11 months, 12-35 months, 3-5 years, etc. with eventually categories getting bigger (e.g. 15-20 years).

Our OP observes that the only thing that has changed about his profile in the last few days is that his total age went to 36 months and that his AAoA went to 12 months.  Everything else that might explain such a significant drop he's ruled out: no new inquiries in the last several months, no new accounts, no shift in total utilization (which appears to be consistently low, around 1%), no lates, no other derogatories, no closing of an account (e.g. paying off a big loan), etc.

Given that, and given that in the last few days he's just moved into a new integer value for total age, I am inclined to think he's right: he's in a new scorecard, probably one for people  with a total age of 3 - ___ years.  (Guesswork, but reasonable guesswork.)

The good news is that he should see some steady improvement as long as he keeps his head down and focuses on his game (no derogs, keep his CC debt reasonably low, etc.) and allows himself to age, just like the freshman football player.

Note to our OP: I will suggest that the one thing you can do is stop applying for credit cards.  You have eight.  You not need any more.  All you need is three to drive your score.  People get scores in the 830s all the time with three cards.  Indeed, there's a chance that, in your new scorecard, FICO sees such a comparatively young profile with a boatload of cards as a risk.  So allow the total age of your profile and your AAoA to both steadily increase and your score should improve each year in a substantial way.  BTW, great work on having installment loans as well and having paid them down a good deal.

PS.  Can you clarify for us the "date opened" of your most recently opened account?  I assumed that you had not opened one in a while, but looking back over your overview, I do not see that you say this explicitly.  You mention that you have not had inquiries, but that is not always the same thing.

---

CreditGuyinDixie,

I really appreciate your deeper and thought provoking analysis of my case history . I had seen some posts from this person named "cashnocredit" in this forum about the re-bucketing philosophy . So it occured to me that I might be into this tricky situation . I am keeping my head down as you say and I have extremely sufficient credit (40 K ) . No more impulse credit card applications atleast for next two years from now . Infact , I am planning on new car purchase sometime August 2017 , by that time I hope to be around 800 in all three bureaus . If not 800 , atleast 760 .. 

My last application was on 8th January 2015 for Chase Freedom Card , which eventually took a while to get approved (14th January 2015 - Last opened account) . But no more applications since then . 

Infact before the Chase card , I got BofA Cash , AMEX BCE and Sallie Mae WMC within  the space of 3-4 weeks before 2014 ended . So I had 4 inquiries between December 1 - January 10 . 

My EQ score had dipped to 707 from 745 because of credit card inquiries (4 of them) during December 2014 and they slowly recovered to 760's till end of July and as my accounts opened last year aged to integer numbers (1 and 3 respectively) , it went downhill , which I probably understood as rebucketing from past case histories.

Installment loan was opened on July 26 2014  with balance of 6 K . Currently its 1.5 K . I am going to take atleast 1-1.5 yrs to pay it off , as I know that FICO 8  seriosuly considers credit mix and with my young credit history , I would try to prolong it . Heck , I have 36 months more to pay it off !!! . So I am fine on that front.

Once again , Thanks for chiming in with your views and welcome more inputs . If you need any more specifics , please let me know .  I am looking for more expert views , as I believe there are veterans who have immense knowledge about these issues and would provide advice for me to sail through this tricky phase. 

[Anonymous]

I guess my score drops by 10 points from 750 to 740 on EQ for just a new account reporting to EQ. My AAoA reduced from 1 yr 4m to 11 m, and my oldest card turns for 2 yr and 5 m to 2 yr 6 m...

Your explanation is helpful to me, and hence I gave Kudos to you

[Thomas_Thumb]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

While you wait for more experienced hands to chime in, let me say a word to other readers who may not fully understand what you mean by "re-bucketing" and what I mean by "moving into a new scorecard."  (We are using them the same way.)

FICO doesn't confine itself to scoring a person abstractly against all other persons.  It does that to some extent, but it also scores you against people who appear to have a somewhat similar credit profile.  Thus, in the first sense (abstract total score) a guy with a profile 20 years old and no derogs is going to tend to have a much better score than a guy with a profile that is say nine months old (other things being somewhat equal).  But FICO has also discovered that, if it it only scores that way, its model loses some of its predictive power.  Therefore people are also grouped into "scorecards" (what the OP refered to as buckets) -- collection of people who are scored relative to each other.

The good news is that if you keep your head down and keep doing doing the same things that made you good at Junior High football, time will be on your side and you will eventually starting having an age that permits you to compete against the other guys on your team (for team read "Scorecard").

No one knows exactly how FICO structures its scorecards.  Based on a number of past myFICO discussions over the last several years, the guess appears to be that FICO has a couple (?) scorecards for people with derogs and maybe ten (wild guess?) for people with no derogs with a major driver (perhaps not the only one) being the  total age of the profile.  Remember, that's speculation, as far as I have heard nobody knows for sure.  But a possible break down for clean profiles might (?) be: 0-11 months, 12-35 months, 3-5 years, etc. with eventually categories getting bigger (e.g. 15-20 years).

Our OP observes that the only thing that has changed about his profile in the last few days is that his total age went to 36 months and that his AAoA went to 12 months.  Everything else that might explain such a significant drop he's ruled out: no new inquiries in the last several months, no new accounts, no shift in total utilization (which appears to be consistently low, around 1%), no lates, no other derogatories, no closing of an account (e.g. paying off a big loan), etc.

Given that, and given that in the last few days he's just moved into a new integer value for total age, I am inclined to think he's right: he's in a new scorecard, probably one for people  with a total age of 3 - ___ years.  (Guesswork, but reasonable guesswork.)

PS.  Can you clarify for us the "date opened" of your most recently opened account?  I assumed that you had not opened one in a while, but looking back over your overview, I do not see that you say this explicitly.  You mention that you have not had inquiries, but that is not always the same thing.

---

Liz Weston's book: Your Credit Score  (4th ed.) states the following for Fico scorecards:

1) Fico 4 scorecards - total 10, 8 for clean files and two for non clean files.

2) Fico 8 scorecards - total 12, 8 for clean profiles, 4 for non clean profiles

Three factors are identified for scorecard assigmet on profiles with only positive information :

a) # of accounts, b) Age of file (oldest account on record) and c) age of youngest account.

My guestimate on breakpoints ... for scorecard assignment is 8 accounts (possibly 10), 8 years and 2 years. If each of these three factors is assigned a + or - then there are a total of 8 combinations; which matches the stated number of scorecards for "only positive information".

If history shows "a serious delinquency", the model also looks for: presence of any public record ( such as bankruptcy or tax lien) and the worst delinquency, if there is more than one on file, to assign a profile to one of the remaining scorecards.

[NRB525]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Hello everyone,

My FICO scores currently from 3B monitoring (CreditCheckTotal) as of writing today

TU - 738

EQ - 729

EX - 729

Three days back my scores were

TU - 762

EQ - 764

EX - 760

which means the drops in my scores are 24 pts , 35 pts and 31 pts in TU , EQ, EX respectively . 

What has changed in my credit profile in the last three days ? NOTHING !!!

Lets get down to specifics . My credit profile  : I have 8 credit cards with total credit limits reaching 40K  . I have Chase,BofA , Barclays , AMEX , Discover .... some of them prime cards .. I believe. I also have a car loan (6K) since last July and I have paid of 75 % of the loan already . I am so far ahead that my next loan payment is due only in 2017 . In 2014 alone I had lot of auto inquiries TU -16 , EQ & EX - 8 , several of them for auto loan... Since January 2015, I dont have any more inquiries ... No derogatories ever...

With all my cards reporting , My revolving balance has been 300$ for the last 10-15 days .. Out of 8 cards ... 3 of them report balance at present ... Utilitzation on those cards are less than 10 % . 

Till July 31st, My average age of accounts was 0.9 years and the oldest account was 2.9 years . On August 1st , it changed to 1 yr (AAoA) and 3 yr (oldest) respectively. 

With no CLD on any of my accounts , Am I currently a victim of rebucketing ? Please let me know if any more specifics is needed . 

---

Do you have any monitoring here from myFICO? That much of a drop.... while rebucketing is a possibility, I would hope the algorithm is not that crude that it would penalize the cardholder that significantly as the accounts simply age.

The alerts from myFICO give you an automated flag when certain things change.

And the three accounts reporting balances, they did not go to zero, correct?  Have any of the other 5 changed from/to reporting zero?

Since nothing apparently changed in the last three days, the next question (it's always the next question, in order to fill in The Rest Of The Story) is what else changed in the file during the last month, and during the last two months? Everything is potentially relevant, and the source of the score drop is likely is in that not-today recent history.

Was there any alert you got from myFICO that anything changed in the file?

Absolutely no derogatories, no papering over any derogatories with Dispute letters at some point in the past?

Any AU accounts where you are AU on an account and the other account has issues?

Any missing payment history on any of your reporting accounts? Reported last month, "Oops it's gone" for August 1?

[Revelate]

Thomas,

What's Liz Weston's source in the bibliography or whatever for the scorecards?  I never saw them in any of the disclosures by bureaus or by the mortgage providers like Credco and similar or at least the released FICO documentation / training that I've seen?

Certainly could be, I've never seen a major change with my AAOA, going from 1 -> 2 years back and forth was a swing of 4 points on a FICO 8 algorithm (yawn); however, I'm absolutely in a dirty bucket however it's scored which might negate big time swings as a result of AAOA.  I might get to be able to see 2 vs 3 years as my recent mortgage, CC, PLOC and possible other CC report if they're delayed a little bit as in theory I cross 36 months this month but I haven't gotten any score updates yet; may skew my utilization test as I managed to get a 87% utilization on my itty bitty Freedom card with only a trivial balance on the rest of my cards so going to let it report and will see if there's a big penalty for it or not though hopefully being Chase I can get a report, get 3 score updates with the large percentage change on that tradeline, and then pay it and get another 3 to isolate it.  Crossing fingers haha.

Looks like I may have more time on my hands shortly, may go read it anyway.

[Anonymous]

---

@NRB525 wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Hello everyone,

My FICO scores currently from 3B monitoring (CreditCheckTotal) as of writing today

TU - 738

EQ - 729

EX - 729

Three days back my scores were

TU - 762

EQ - 764

EX - 760

which means the drops in my scores are 24 pts , 35 pts and 31 pts in TU , EQ, EX respectively . 

What has changed in my credit profile in the last three days ? NOTHING !!!

Lets get down to specifics . My credit profile  : I have 8 credit cards with total credit limits reaching 40K  . I have Chase,BofA , Barclays , AMEX , Discover .... some of them prime cards .. I believe. I also have a car loan (6K) since last July and I have paid of 75 % of the loan already . I am so far ahead that my next loan payment is due only in 2017 . In 2014 alone I had lot of auto inquiries TU -16 , EQ & EX - 8 , several of them for auto loan... Since January 2015, I dont have any more inquiries ... No derogatories ever...

With all my cards reporting , My revolving balance has been 300$ for the last 10-15 days .. Out of 8 cards ... 3 of them report balance at present ... Utilitzation on those cards are less than 10 % . 

Till July 31st, My average age of accounts was 0.9 years and the oldest account was 2.9 years . On August 1st , it changed to 1 yr (AAoA) and 3 yr (oldest) respectively. 

With no CLD on any of my accounts , Am I currently a victim of rebucketing ? Please let me know if any more specifics is needed . 

---

Do you have any monitoring here from myFICO? That much of a drop.... while rebucketing is a possibility, I would hope the algorithm is not that crude that it would penalize the cardholder that significantly as the accounts simply age.

The alerts from myFICO give you an automated flag when certain things change.

And the three accounts reporting balances, they did not go to zero, correct?  Have any of the other 5 changed from/to reporting zero?

Since nothing apparently changed in the last three days, the next question (it's always the next question, in order to fill in The Rest Of The Story) is what else changed in the file during the last month, and during the last two months? Everything is potentially relevant, and the source of the score drop is likely is in that not-today recent history.

Was there any alert you got from myFICO that anything changed in the file?

Absolutely no derogatories, no papering over any derogatories with Dispute letters at some point in the past?

Any AU accounts where you are AU on an account and the other account has issues?

Any missing payment history on any of your reporting accounts? Reported last month, "Oops it's gone" for August 1?

---

NRB525,

Do you have any monitoring here from myFICO?

@I have EQ scorewatch subscription with myFICO for the past 10 months . myFICO has been pretty slow in updating (It has not updated in this case) . You might have hear about "CreditCheckTotal" recently in these forums . They are providing all three bureau FICO scores every month for 15 $ . I have subscription for 5 years @ that rate for all three FICO score pulls .  Today , I checked my scores and they were what I  had mentioned in the initial post . 3-4 days back they were are all above 760's . 

And the three accounts reporting balances, they did not go to zero, correct?  Have any of the other 5 changed from/to reporting zero?

Those three accounts and their balances / credit limits as of today (08/02/2015) are as follows 

Barclays Sallie Mae -  $102 / $2800  (reported last on July 9th)

AMEX BCE - $ 97 / $7500 (reported last on July 20th)

BofA Cash - $101 / $ 3500 (reported last on July 11th)

Other Five cards have been reported 0 balances for the past 3 months .  I read from myFICO forums that more accounts with balances will create drop in score . So I limit it to 3 out of 8 . 

What else changed in the file during the last month, and during the last two months?

The last time I received a credit limit increase (without hard pull)  was way back in May for Discover Card  . AMEX 3x CLI , I received in early February . I dont see any other change than using those three cards consistenly for the past three months reporting some balances (3-5 % utilization) and rest of them reporting zero . I have been paying 100 $ on my car loan consistently for the past six months , just prolonging installment history . I cannot think of any other thing that has changed.

Was there any alert you got from myFICO that anything changed in the file?

I only receive balance change alerts from myFICO for those three cards every month . Generally my balances lie around 200-400 $ every month . My total credit limits are upto $40K . Utilitzation is 1 % at the max for last three months . Rest of the cards I dont use , so no updates on those cards. No alerts or score change from myFICO for this as they are pretty late in updating . 

Absolutely no derogatories, no papering over any derogatories with Dispute letters at some point in the past?

I have pretty clean credit history . No late payments , collections , bankruptcies , whatever people want to call  it . No derogatories . Period . 

Any AU accounts where you are AU on an account and the other account has issues?

I have not authorized any one on my card (to use it) , neither I am authorized to use anyone's card . So that is out of question. 

Any missing payment history on any of your reporting accounts? Reported last month, "Oops it's gone" for August 1?

Nope . Clean Credit History . Average Age of accounts currently is 1 year and my oldest open account was 3 years . Credit score was in 760's when it was 0.9 years and 2.9 years respectively till July 31st . On August 1st , All Hell broke loose !!! .

Thanks for asking me more specifics about this issue . Let me know if you need more specific data from me , so that I could get a better idea of whether the rebucketing is the acutal issue or not . 

[NRB525]

In your CCT report, does that list out your payment history on all your cards on your credit report? Or it's only a summary?

Where I'm going with this one is, the months of history are critical to building a score. If they quietly disappear, as far as I know there is no alert or notification that would appear. Only by pulling your full credit report could you compare the prior credit report to see whether one of your accounts, active or closed, has dropped the payment history, is no longer reporting all of it or perhaps any of it.

Based on everything else I hear, this is the only factor I can think of that would cause this score drop. The only one. Thus the importance of getting your hands on a full CR for comparison, not a summary.

[Anonymous]

---

@Thomas_Thumb wrote:

---

---

Liz Weston's book: Your Credit Score  (4th ed.) states the following for Fico scorecards:

1) Fico 4 scorecards - total 10, 8 for clean files and two for non clean files.

2) Fico 8 scorecards - total 12, 8 for clean profiles, 4 for non clean profiles

Three factors are identified for scorecard assigmet on profiles with only positive information :

a) # of accounts, b) AAoA and c) age of youngest account.

My guestimate on breakpoints ... for scorecard assignment is 8 accounts (possibly 10), 8 years and 2 years. If each of these three factors is assigned a + or - then there are a total of 8 combinations; which matches the stated number of scorecards for "only positive information".

If history shows "a serious delinquency", the model also looks for: presence of any public record ( such as bankruptcy or tax lien) and the worst delinquency, if there is more than one on file, to assign a profile to one of the remaining scorecards.

---

Hey Thom Thumb!  Thanks for the reference regarding Liz Weston's book.

Does she mention where she gets that information?  I am sure that much of the probably very sound advice she gives in her book is based on information that FICO has made public, or perhaps to a lesser extent "open secrets" (things not officially published but well known by all people who are FICO junkies).  But the impression I have always gotten is that the exact number of scorecards and the factors that go into them were trade secrets.

If she's right, then total length of credit history is not a factor that is used at ALL in the determination of scorecards, which surprises me mildly, though I can certainly believe it.  If she is right about the total number of clean scorecards, and the fact that exactly three factors are used, then your observation that 2 * 2 * 2 = 8 (three +/- flags) certainly sounds like a plausible guess.  It would, however, mean that a very sharp cutoff happens kicking people into other scorecards.  For example, for AAoA, it would mean that it might be 0-2.999 = minus, 3.0 or more = plus.  For total number of accounts it might be 1-4 accounts = Minus, 5-999 accounts = Plus.  That's a real sharp division... all you get as that boolean on-or-off possibility, nothing more granular.