topic Re: Will a cli increase my FICO? in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Will a cli increase my FICO?

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 01:35:09 GMT

i realize there are lots of variables involved, but in general terms, if nothing else changes on your report, but you recently received a cli from $300 to $3500 on a card, can you expect to see an increase? How soon after that particular account updates said cli to your reports should you see a change in your FICO?

Re: Will a cli increase my FICO?

Thomas_Thumb — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 02:45:08 GMT

Receiving a CLI on a credit card does not increase your score. Only credit based insurance scores look at average card credit limit in scoring.

What DOES affect your Fico scores is credit utilization [lower is better]. So a CLI may indirectly result in a higher Fico score IF your aggregate credit utilization (reported total balance)/(total credit limit for all open CC accounts) drops to a lower bin - say from above 30% to under 9%. You can also get a score increase if you were maxing out the CC (85% UT or higher) and now with the CLI the card's utilization has dropped to under 30% or 50%.

Re: Will a cli increase my FICO?

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 02:51:04 GMT

@Thomas_Thumb wrote:
Receiving a CLI on a credit card does not increase your score. Only credit based insurance scores look at average card credit limit in scoring.

What DOES affect your Fico scores is credit utilization [lower is better]. So a CLI may indirectly result in a higher Fico score IF your aggregate credit utilization (reported total balance)/(total credit limit for all open CC accounts) drops to a lower bin - say from above 30% to under 9%. You can also get a score increase if you were maxing out the CC (85% UT or higher) and now with the CLI the card's utilization has dropped to under 30% or 50%.

Thanks. I should have been more descriptive. I did mean the question in terms of indirectly increasing as it definitely lowered my utilization. I've been working on lowering utilization as it were, but this dropped me from roughly 55% to 30%.

Re: Will a cli increase my FICO?

Thomas_Thumb — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 03:02:55 GMT

If that's aggregate utilization, you should see a score increase going from above 50% to under 50%. Other thresholds for AG UT appear to be below 30% and below 9%. There may also be one at 20% but don't count on it.

On a per card basis many posters with relatively thin files report a score boost by dropping the card's UT from above 50% to under 50% but most don't see a score boost at that level.

Re: Will a cli increase my FICO?

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 16:26:44 GMT

@Thomas_Thumb wrote:
If that's aggregate utilization, you should see a score increase going from above 50% to under 50%. Other thresholds for AG UT appear to be below 30% and below 9%. There may also be one at 20% but don't count on it.

On a per card basis many posters with relatively thin files report a score boost by dropping the card's UT from above 50% to under 50% but most don't see a score boost at that level.

I know my TU report updated yesterday and reflects the new credit limit. Unfortunately, my FICO has not changed, but I assum eit must be lagging on the update?

Re: Will a cli increase my FICO?

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 22:44:45 GMT

In case anyone is curious, my TU score just updated and reflected a 5 point swing. EX and EQ have not updated as of yet.