@Anonymous wrote:Most important factor for 850s to me is "age of oldest account" as this is likely the basis for the scorecard/bucket tiering, not AAoA.
I've been at 850 month over month from 1/2014 to present on Fico 8 and on Fico 9 since it started reporting. Here are some low/high data points:
- Age of oldest installment loan (open or closed) [ 17 years in early 2014, 9 years in 2015 (closed loan mortgage aged off), 12 years now]
- Age of oldest credit card (open or closed, not AU) [ 30 years in 2014, 33 years now]
- Are any consumer finance accounts present? [never]
- Aggregate utilization on credit cards [ 0.5% to 8% - one time only TU on a 3B report (10/2016) reported a Fico 8 score drop to 845, other CRAs reported 850 and all Fico 9s were 850]. The 3B report only showed 3% AG UT at the time but I had captured an AG UT above 9% on CK the day before. Made me wonder if the 3B summary data pulled from a different source file than that sucked into the scoring model(s).
- Any high utilization credit cards (68.9%+?) - Yes 75% on BB store card with no impact on score.
- Age of the newest account reporting in months [ 30 months in 2/2014, over 72 months now]
- Number of inquiries under 12 months of age [most 1 on EQ and one on TU. None on EX. Chassic Fico 8 and Fico 9 scores do not change 0 => 1 INQ ... but VS3 score is impacted 5 points]
- Average age of all accounts [16 to 18 years - some accounts above average age have fallen off but remaining accounts have obviously aged up]
- Credit Mix: Number of open credit cards, number of open installment loans (and type) - [Fico credit mix includes closed accounts. It is a misnomer to categorize mix as open accounts. Lack of certain account types can impact points received in the amount owed category and possibly payment history. However by definitionj these are not the mix category]
- Mortgages 2/2014: 1 Open = 9 years, 1 Closed = 17 years (aged off in 2015); 1 open 11/2017
- Credit & charge cards: 2014 - 7 open & 6 closed; 2017 6 open and 2 closed with one open being an AU card- Currently total accounts = 9, total open accounts = 7.
Fico and other scoring algorithms rely heavily on a review of active accounts. Closed accounts and open accounts that are not active don't provide current data payment history and amounts owed. Thus loss in of potential points in critical scoring categories. As mentioned, mix itself is a different category.
@Anonymous wrote:
Someone on FB sent me their sanitized 3B and they're at 84X with an AoOA of 16+ years. Everything else is perfect (balance on mortgage is under 7% left to pay, balance on car loan is under 5% left to pay, 5+ CCs, AAoA is over 6 years, very low utilization sub 2% aggregate and no individual balance over 8%, etc, etc, etc). I figured they'd be a shoe-in for 850 but maybe because they don't have one of those 20+ year old accounts is holding them back. Nothing else made sense, no inquiries, no accounts less than 2 years, etc, etc. Really bugs me that they're NOT at 850. He's also only 35 years old so he's done the credit game perfectly from what I can see.
It's not age of oldest holding back score - probably somewhere between 12 to 16 years AoOA is good enough for the old folks scorecard. Also, multiple scorecards can achieve 850 - so being on the elder scorecard is not critical. That being said the H-H-H scorecard almost certainly offers more potential buffer.
A limiting factor for the FB poster appears to be the low AAoA of 6 years. I'm sticking with 7 years or 7 years 8 months as a minimum AAoA to reach Fico 8, 850.
Also, for loans it's NOT all about remaining B/L - a lengthy payment history is meaningful as well.
BTW - as an added data point I let all charges report on statements and reported balances on 100% of my cards on three occassions. Fico 8 score stayed at 850 on all CRAs. Had 100% of cards report three different times.
In contrast to Fico 8, EQ Fico 04 (score 5) punished my score severely. EQ Fico 04 dropped to 765 one time and 764 the other time I checked mortgage scores with 100% of cards reporting balances - AG UT under 6% both times. [score shift: 809 => 764 and 809 => 765]. EQ Fico 8: 850 => 850 by comparison
Note: My EQ Fico 04 is 809 with 2 or 3 cards reporting. Never had only one card reporting. I suspect my Fico mortgage scores would benefit but, since my AU card counts with Fico 04/Fico 98, I won't be getting down to one card only reporting.
