topic Re: FICO 5 EQ vs FICO 8 EQ in Understanding FICO® Scoring

FICO 5 EQ vs FICO 8 EQ

SouthJamaica — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 23:50:51 GMT

I've been concentrating on FICO 8, since it's the only one I can monitor in real time, or almost real time.

Bu it seems to me that the most likely score to be determinative of a mortgage rate is the FICO 5 EQ.

It is disturbing to me personally that this is the case, since my FICO 5 EQ is 73 points lower than my FICO 8 EQ.

There are no negatives in my EQ report.

Can someone point out some of the differences between 5 and 8, so I can begin figuring out how to appease this monster?

Re: FICO 5 EQ vs FICO 8 EQ

JLK93 — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 01:14:32 GMT

There are a number of differences between EQ FICO 5 (EQ04) and EQ FICO 8 (EQ08). Off the top of my head:

1. EQ FICO 5 has a maximum top score of 818 as opposed to 850 for EQ FICO 8.

2. EQ FICO 5 can be very sensitive to # of cards reporting balances for some scorecards. The $2 trick was developed specifically for this scoring model. EQ FICO 8 is much less sensitive.

3. EQ FICO 5 can experience large swings in sensitivity to # of cards reporting balances due to rebucketing. EQ FICO 8 is more stable.

4. EQ FICO 5 is generally more sensitive to utilization. This can probably vary according to Scorecard.

5. For both scoring models FICO only scores the first 6 inquiries.

That is all I can think of at the moment. Others can probably chime in with more differences.

Re: FICO 5 EQ vs FICO 8 EQ

Adidas — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 01:17:49 GMT

@JLK93 wrote:

5. For both scoring models FICO only scores the first 6 inquiries.

Can you clarify what you mean by this?

Re: FICO 5 EQ vs FICO 8 EQ

JLK93 — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 01:22:49 GMT

@Adidas wrote:
@JLK93 wrote:

5. For both scoring models FICO only scores the first 6 inquiries.

Can you clarify what you mean by this?

After the first 6 hard inquiries, you don't lose any points for further inquiries. It is something I noticed in my own reports. Later, I found out that it was an old common knowledge type thing.

Re: FICO 5 EQ vs FICO 8 EQ

JLK93 — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 01:55:41 GMT

@JLK93 wrote:
There are a number of differences between EQ FICO 5 (EQ04) and EQ FICO 8 (EQ08). Off the top of my head:

1. EQ FICO 5 has a maximum top score of 818 as opposed to 850 for EQ FICO 8.
2. EQ FICO 5 can be very sensitive to # of cards reporting balances for some scorecards. The $2 trick was developed specifically for this scoring model. EQ FICO 8 is much less sensitive.
3. EQ FICO 5 can experience large swings in sensitivity to # of cards reporting balances due to rebucketing. EQ FICO 8 is more stable.
4. EQ FICO 5 is generally more sensitive to utilization. This can probably vary according to Scorecard.
5. For both scoring models FICO only scores the first 6 inquiries.

That is all I can think of at the moment. Others can probably chime in with more differences.

Just remembered 2 more.

6. For EQ FICO 5, youngest account aging to 6 months is a major rebucketing event for some clean profiles. Youngest account aging to 1 year doesn't seem to hold any particular significance.

7. For EQ FICO 8, youngest account aging to 1 year is a major rebucketing event. Youngest account aging to 6 months is a yawn.

Re: FICO 5 EQ vs FICO 8 EQ

Revelate — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 02:15:56 GMT

Anecdotally FICO 8 focuses on weights recent data more heavily when it comes to derogatories.

Tax lien added with an old lien already on report:

FICO 5: -5 points

FICO 8 -52 points.

Probably coincidental but they landed within 3 points of each other; by the six month mark my score had recovered on FICO 8. Similar behavior is seen with other types of derogatories; does not apply to clean files of course.

Also FICO 8 effectively mandates having both credit cards and installment loans open, and at pretty utilization metrics for both for optimal scoring. FICO 5 didn't particularly care: we saw that when we made the transition to FICO 8 on Scorewatch and 2 people each dropped from 680-690 to 636-640 from not having any open credit cards and just having installment history.

Also FICO 5 doesn't care about installment utilization, loan counts for credit mix and that's it.

Look in the reason codes for your particular differences TBH.

Re: FICO 5 EQ vs FICO 8 EQ

SouthJamaica — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 03:09:39 GMT

@JLK93 wrote:
There are a number of differences between EQ FICO 5 (EQ04) and EQ FICO 8 (EQ08). Off the top of my head:

1. EQ FICO 5 has a maximum top score of 818 as opposed to 850 for EQ FICO 8.
2. EQ FICO 5 can be very sensitive to # of cards reporting balances for some scorecards. The $2 trick was developed specifically for this scoring model. EQ FICO 8 is much less sensitive.
3. EQ FICO 5 can experience large swings in sensitivity to # of cards reporting balances due to rebucketing. EQ FICO 8 is more stable.
4. EQ FICO 5 is generally more sensitive to utilization. This can probably vary according to Scorecard.
5. For both scoring models FICO only scores the first 6 inquiries.

That is all I can think of at the moment. Others can probably chime in with more differences.

Wow. Thank you very much!

Re: FICO 5 EQ vs FICO 8 EQ

SouthJamaica — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 03:11:04 GMT

@JLK93 wrote:
@JLK93 wrote:
There are a number of differences between EQ FICO 5 (EQ04) and EQ FICO 8 (EQ08). Off the top of my head:

1. EQ FICO 5 has a maximum top score of 818 as opposed to 850 for EQ FICO 8.
2. EQ FICO 5 can be very sensitive to # of cards reporting balances for some scorecards. The $2 trick was developed specifically for this scoring model. EQ FICO 8 is much less sensitive.
3. EQ FICO 5 can experience large swings in sensitivity to # of cards reporting balances due to rebucketing. EQ FICO 8 is more stable.
4. EQ FICO 5 is generally more sensitive to utilization. This can probably vary according to Scorecard.
5. For both scoring models FICO only scores the first 6 inquiries.

That is all I can think of at the moment. Others can probably chime in with more differences.

Just remembered 2 more.

6. For EQ FICO 5, youngest account aging to 6 months is a major rebucketing event for some clean profiles. Youngest account aging to 1 year doesn't seem to hold any particular significance.
7. For EQ FICO 8, youngest account aging to 1 year is a major rebucketing event. Youngest account aging to 6 months is a yawn.

Thank you again You've provided me with a wealth of information

Re: FICO 5 EQ vs FICO 8 EQ

SouthJamaica — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 03:13:20 GMT

@Revelate wrote:
Anecdotally FICO 8 focuses on weights recent data more heavily when it comes to derogatories.

Tax lien added with an old lien already on report:
FICO 5: -5 points
FICO 8 -52 points.

Probably coincidental but they landed within 3 points of each other; by the six month mark my score had recovered on FICO 8. Similar behavior is seen with other types of derogatories; does not apply to clean files of course.

Also FICO 8 effectively mandates having both credit cards and installment loans open, and at pretty utilization metrics for both for optimal scoring. FICO 5 didn't particularly care: we saw that when we made the transition to FICO 8 on Scorewatch and 2 people each dropped from 680-690 to 636-640 from not having any open credit cards and just having installment history.

Also FICO 5 doesn't care about installment utilization, loan counts for credit mix and that's it.

Look in the reason codes for your particular differences TBH.

Thank you so much Revelate. I'm writing all this down

Re: FICO 5 EQ vs FICO 8 EQ

SouthJamaica — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 10:51:01 GMT

@Revelate wrote:
Anecdotally FICO 8 focuses on weights recent data more heavily when it comes to derogatories.

Tax lien added with an old lien already on report:
FICO 5: -5 points
FICO 8 -52 points.

Probably coincidental but they landed within 3 points of each other; by the six month mark my score had recovered on FICO 8. Similar behavior is seen with other types of derogatories; does not apply to clean files of course.

Also FICO 8 effectively mandates having both credit cards and installment loans open, and at pretty utilization metrics for both for optimal scoring. FICO 5 didn't particularly care: we saw that when we made the transition to FICO 8 on Scorewatch and 2 people each dropped from 680-690 to 636-640 from not having any open credit cards and just having installment history.

Also FICO 5 doesn't care about installment utilization, loan counts for credit mix and that's it.

Look in the reason codes for your particular differences TBH.

Followed your excellent advice to compare the negative reason codes!

The following reason codes appeared for FICO 5 which did not appear for FICO 8, thus giving me a clear path to improving the FICO 5 score:

new recent acct
recently looking for credit
too many cards carrying balance

Well that answers that, for my situation

Gotta remember that trick for future instances of wonderment at why a partcular score is lagging.

Re: FICO 5 EQ vs FICO 8 EQ

Revelate — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 13:55:40 GMT

@SouthJamaica wrote:
@Revelate wrote:
Anecdotally FICO 8 focuses on weights recent data more heavily when it comes to derogatories.

Tax lien added with an old lien already on report:
FICO 5: -5 points
FICO 8 -52 points.

Probably coincidental but they landed within 3 points of each other; by the six month mark my score had recovered on FICO 8. Similar behavior is seen with other types of derogatories; does not apply to clean files of course.

Also FICO 8 effectively mandates having both credit cards and installment loans open, and at pretty utilization metrics for both for optimal scoring. FICO 5 didn't particularly care: we saw that when we made the transition to FICO 8 on Scorewatch and 2 people each dropped from 680-690 to 636-640 from not having any open credit cards and just having installment history.

Also FICO 5 doesn't care about installment utilization, loan counts for credit mix and that's it.

Look in the reason codes for your particular differences TBH.
Followed your excellent advice to compare the negative reason codes!

The following reason codes appeared for FICO 5 which did not appear for FICO 8, thus giving me a clear path to improving the FICO 5 score:

new recent acct
recently looking for credit
too many cards carrying balance

Well that answers that, for my situation

Gotta remember that trick for future instances of wonderment at why a partcular score is lagging.

Bueno, out of curiosity for comparison purposes what were the reason codes for FICO 8?

Presumably with enough data around this from a number of people we could start trying to figure out some of the weighting differences, maybe. Big project and probably not enough contributors and it's purely an intellectual exercise compared to optimization strategies.

Re: FICO 5 EQ vs FICO 8 EQ

SouthJamaica — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 14:57:55 GMT

@Revelate wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:
@Revelate wrote:
Anecdotally FICO 8 focuses on weights recent data more heavily when it comes to derogatories.

Tax lien added with an old lien already on report:
FICO 5: -5 points
FICO 8 -52 points.

Probably coincidental but they landed within 3 points of each other; by the six month mark my score had recovered on FICO 8. Similar behavior is seen with other types of derogatories; does not apply to clean files of course.

Also FICO 8 effectively mandates having both credit cards and installment loans open, and at pretty utilization metrics for both for optimal scoring. FICO 5 didn't particularly care: we saw that when we made the transition to FICO 8 on Scorewatch and 2 people each dropped from 680-690 to 636-640 from not having any open credit cards and just having installment history.

Also FICO 5 doesn't care about installment utilization, loan counts for credit mix and that's it.

Look in the reason codes for your particular differences TBH.
Followed your excellent advice to compare the negative reason codes!

The following reason codes appeared for FICO 5 which did not appear for FICO 8, thus giving me a clear path to improving the FICO 5 score:

new recent acct
recently looking for credit
too many cards carrying balance

Well that answers that, for my situation

Gotta remember that trick for future instances of wonderment at why a partcular score is lagging.
Bueno, out of curiosity for comparison purposes what were the reason codes for FICO 8?

Short credit history; that one appeared on both. That was the only negative reason code on FICO 8.

Presumably with enough data around this from a number of people we could start trying to figure out some of the weighting differences, maybe. Big project and probably not enough contributors and it's purely an intellectual exercise compared to optimization strategies.

Well in my case I can say this: those 3 reasons appear to have accounted for a 65 point difference between FICO 8 and FICO 5 from the exact same data [I misspoke earlier when I said it was a 73 point difference]. The scores were 720 for FICO 5 and 785 for FICO 8. That's an awful big spread, in my opinion, considering how minor these things were.

But one could also conclude that the score difference supports basically all of the factors mentioned by you and JLK93:

-open installment loan utilization percentage: i have that highly manicured and perfected for FICO 8, but FICO 5 doesn't seem impressed
-open installment loans: here again I have the SSL open, with a $37 balance, for no reason other than to appease FICO 8, but FICO 5, again, is indifferent
-youngest account: it's as new as it could be, but apparently FICO 5 is more interested than FICO 8, since the FICO 8 monster was silent on the subject
-number of cards reporting a balance: for crying out loud, it's only 5 out of 24 accounts, which FICO 8 could care less about but FICO 5 does not like, it appears
-revolving utilization: it's around 1.7%; FICO 8 wouldn't find that problematic in the least, but apparently FICO 5 does have a preference for my more usual .5%

Re: FICO 5 EQ vs FICO 8 EQ

Revelate — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 14:58:56 GMT

Well FICO 8 plays out of 850 for all CRA's, top end EQ FICO 5 is 818 and that's 32 points off the top.

i.e. it's not a full 65 points difference once you get into the higher scoring buckets, but it is absolutely interesting to note how many complaints you have (clean scorecard wise) on FICO 5 vs not on FICO 8.

Re: FICO 5 EQ vs FICO 8 EQ

SouthJamaica — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 15:01:59 GMT

@Revelate wrote:
Well FICO 8 plays out of 850 for all CRA's, top end EQ FICO 5 is 818 and that's 32 points off the top.

i.e. it's not a full 65 points difference once you get into the higher scoring buckets, but it is absolutely interesting to note how many complaints you have (clean scorecard wise) on FICO 5 vs not on FICO 8.

Yes, 4 versus 1.

Re: FICO 5 EQ vs FICO 8 EQ

SouthJamaica — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 16:09:20 GMT

Actually maybe this chart conveys a different story. When I got rebucketed due to my only negative aging off, my FICO 8 soared; my FICO 5 less so.