Transunion FICO 04 - too many accounts reason code

[Revelate]

So I realized I had a 30D late coming up on the 2 year mark next month (10/2015) so I pulled a TU 1B to try to get a baseline for changes.  FICO 8 and FICO 9 both are still complaining about the missed payment as #1 everywhere on my otherwise clean file, but this gem is actually on a mortgage model, and therefore it's relevant.

Over time we've only had 1 or 2 reports of people suggesting too many accounts is a problem, but I would suggest this is conclusive.

Last account opened in January, no inquiries, 30D late from 10/2015, installment utilization is a mess but FICO 04 doesn't care about such things... and apparently I may have been rebucketed on FICO 04 explicitly.  This is not awesome as the new account went over 6 months (which doesn't appear to be a thing anywhere else) and the late has fallen off the reason codes for both this and 04 Bankcard (which also has the too many accounts)... sorry for the not great datapoint but the reason code is an unfortunate beauty.

29 total accounts for the salient datapoint.

6/6/17:

9/23/17:

[wife2froggy]

Unfortunately I think those lates are going to haunt you until they fall off at 7 years. My last missed payment was 4 years ago and they still give that as a reason. CK doesn't - Vantagescore "forgives" lates after 2 years. I think Fico 9 does too but someone will have to check me on that.

[Anonymous]

Does VS 3.0 really "forgive" lates after 2 years or is it just the fluff software like CK uses that shows late payments not mattering after 2 years?  I know even if you have a severe late like 120 days, once it passes the 2 year mark the CK fluff software will show your payment history as 100% but that late payment obviously still matters.

[wife2froggy]

^^ You're probably right. I misused "forgive." My last late was 4 years ago. FICO still marks me down for it but VS shows 100% payment history.

[Anonymous]

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@Revelate wrote:

So I realized I had a 30D late coming up on the 2 year mark next month (10/2015) so I pulled a TU 1B to try to get a baseline for changes.  FICO 8 and FICO 9 both are still complaining about the missed payment as #1 everywhere on my otherwise clean file, but this gem is actually on a mortgage model, and therefore it's relevant.

Over time we've only had 1 or 2 reports of people suggesting too many accounts is a problem, but I would suggest this is conclusive.

Last account opened in January, no inquiries, 30D late from 10/2015, installment utilization is a mess but FICO 04 doesn't care about such things... and apparently I may have been rebucketed on FICO 04 explicitly.  This is not awesome as the new account went over 6 months (which doesn't appear to be a thing anywhere else) and the late has fallen off the reason codes for both this and 04 Bankcard (which also has the too many accounts)... sorry for the not great datapoint but the reason code is an unfortunate beauty.

29 total accounts for the salient datapoint.

6/6/17:

9/23/17:

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Hey Revelate!  This is interesting.  Especially since you have had 29 accounts consistently since Januray of this year, and the June pull does not mention this reason statement at all and the recent pull suggest it is the top scoring problem.

[Anonymous]

Is your theory that you were rebucketed as a result of your Age of Youngest Account turning six months -- and in the previous scorecard FICO doesn;t penalize people for too many accounts, whereas in this new scorecard it's an important factor?

[Anonymous]

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@wife2froggy wrote:

^^ You're probably right. I misused "forgive." My last late was 4 years ago. FICO still marks me down for it but VS shows 100% payment history.

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When you say "VS shows 100% payment history" where are you seeing that?  Is it Credit Karma?  If it's CK, it's not VS "showing" you anything, that's CK misrepresenting the VS scoring model.  Their fluff software will say you have 100% payment history if you have no lates in the last 2 years, but that doesn't mean that VS 3.0 doesn't care about or exclude from scoring [with respect to payment history] late payments from over 2 years ago.

[wife2froggy]

^^ Correct again. I really only use credit karma to track when each of my CCs are reporting so I can be sure to pay down the balance before they cycle. I forgot CK and VS are two different things.

[Anonymous]

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@wife2froggy wrote:

^^ Correct again. I really only use credit karma to track when each of my CCs are reporting so I can be sure to pay down the balance before they cycle. I forgot CK and VS are two different things.

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You are using Karma in a very profitable way.

Strictly speaking, Karma is three things:

(1)  TU and EQ reports.  This is the actual listing of the accounts: the date opened, the date last reported, the date closed, the type of account, the current balance, etc.  And also the othet stuff that comes with a report: your inquries, etc.

(2)  Summary software that tries to help the reader make sense of the reports.  This would be stuff like your total utilization, your Average Age of Accounts, etc. 

(3)  The Vantage 3.0 Scores.

The trouble is that people will often say "Karma" and mean only one of these three things, or two of them.  Also common is to assume that #2 is an accurate explanation of how the VS algorithm created your scores (#3).  Or even that #2 is accurate in its claims taken by itself.

#2 is largely unreliable.  The AAoA is often wrong, since Karma's summary software ignores closed accounts.  The payment history summary can be misleading since it appears to imply that lates older than a few years are ignored by the scoring algorithm.  Even the utilization calculation can be wrong, if you have closed accounts with balances, or if the % given is 0%, 9%, 29%, etc.  (Karma's summary often rounds down when it should always round up.)

[Anonymous]

Correct above on CK software rounding down with respect to utilization.  CK almost always lists my utilization as 0% when I know very well it's 1% and scored accordingly.