topic Re: Discover scores? in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Discover scores?

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Dec 2016 21:57:53 GMT

So I have a Discover it card and it also comes with TU fico score. Also have a BOA CC and it is also comes with free monthly TU fico score. Both of these are the same every month. And from reading here, they are real fico 8 scores.

But also I have just found out about the Discover Free Credit Scorecard and it says it is based on Experian. https://www.creditscorecard.com/registration

Does anyone know if this is also a real fico 8 score? If it is then I will sign up and now just need to find a way to see the other one for free too lol

Thanks,

Re: Discover scores?

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Dec 2016 22:04:49 GMT

That is indeed a true FICO 8 score drawn on Experian data.

I have not heard of a similar free way to access to your FICO 8 on EQ. Citibank does offer free FICO scores to its customers, though that is FICO 8 Bankcard Enhanced, which is a different model and has a different range.

You should also sign yourself up to get a free monthly Experian report (just google that phrase) and also join Credit Karma to get weekly free access to your TU and EQ reports if you have not done so.

Re: Discover scores?

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Dec 2016 22:08:34 GMT

Awesome! Thank you for the info

Re: Discover scores?

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Dec 2016 23:20:40 GMT

Believe it or not, Fingerhut offers a free EQ FICO 08 score...

Re: Discover scores?

SouthJamaica — Wed, 28 Dec 2016 23:34:36 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Believe it or not, Fingerhut offers a free EQ FICO 08 score...

Wow.

Re: Discover scores?

newhis — Wed, 28 Dec 2016 23:56:58 GMT

I have read that a site that gives a free credit score was acquired by Experian and if you create a user there you will get a free monthly Experian report and FICO score, and not only the free report.

Re: Discover scores?

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 00:50:14 GMT

@SouthJamaica wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
Believe it or not, Fingerhut offers a free EQ FICO 08 score...
Wow.

I know, right? It's tough to get really excited about that.

Re: Discover scores?

Revelate — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 01:24:21 GMT

It's a legit partnership with Experian, and it's also in my opinion unsupportable. Apparently there are lots of subscribers (myself included) who are having authentication problems, and their password reset is horribly broken.

If you get in and it works fantastic, but the free Experian service comes with a very solid EX monitoring solution too so far, both inquiries were registered and reported to me within a minute or thereabouts of their occurring.

So I'll pass on the Discover Scorecard for now; unfortunate as it held promise. The Fingerhut EQ FICO 8 which I was unfamiliar with, to my knowledge is unique in offering that score for free so that's a thing, not that I'll run out and get one.

Re: Discover scores?

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 01:47:32 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Believe it or not, Fingerhut offers a free EQ FICO 08 score...

Really? This is the first I've heard of an EQ FICO 08 being offered for free with an account, unless anyone knows of others that I'm simply not aware of. It seems that TU seems to be the most commonly offered (be it FICO 08 or VS 3.0) with EX a distant second, but nothing for EQ.

Re: Discover scores?

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 03:11:54 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
Believe it or not, Fingerhut offers a free EQ FICO 08 score...
Really? This is the first I've heard of an EQ FICO 08 being offered for free with an account, unless anyone knows of others that I'm simply not aware of. It seems that TU seems to be the most commonly offered (be it FICO 08 or VS 3.0) with EX a distant second, but nothing for EQ.

They really do. There was a thread on it a while back, maybe a few months ago. DH has a Fingerhut account as part of his rebuild. AFAIK they're the only ones that offer EQ, unfortunately.

Re: Discover scores?

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 03:45:04 GMT

I really like the way that Citi offers a free EQ FICO 8 Bankcard Enhanced score. It's not exactly the same model as FICO 8 Classic, but then again it's worth noting that FICO 8 Classic is not the same model across all three bureaus. I.e. EQ FICO 8 is a slightly different scoring model from TU FICO 8 and again from EX FICO 8.

And when one is relying on scores from credit cards or other free sources, it almost always means the scores are being pulled at different times during the month, so even if the model were exactly the same we'd see variability.

So I have come around to liking the fact that I have with Citi both a window into my EQ score and a window into how the BE flavor behaves.

Re: Discover scores?

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 14:29:29 GMT

CGID,

How does your EQ BE score compare to your EQ FICO 08 score, generally speaking? Are there specific categories or factors that the BE model weighs differently than FICO 08?

Re: Discover scores?

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 15:50:31 GMT

I have very little hard evidence, since I have only seen my EQ FICO 8 Classic and EQ FICO 8 BE pulled on the same day once. That was 18 months ago when I subscribed to the $30 myFICO product and then cancelled a week later.

The results were what you'd expect for a profile like mine. My Classic score was 836 and my BE was therefore higher at 854 (ceiling for Classic is 850 and celing for BE is 900).

That was back when I had 4 credit cards. I have added 7 more cards in the last 16 months, and you'd think that adding lots of credit cards would cause the BE score to be especially inclined to dive due to perceived risk, but it hasn't. It's gone down some but my TU Classic score (for example) has gone down more. I have always had ultralow utilization.

I will get to see another snapshot in early April when I add the $30 MF package again (and then cancel). I am curious to see what my mortgage scores are since all the new cards were added, and I will get to see my FICO 9 for the first time.

The thing I am most interested in is whether lenders who use the BE score rather than Classic tend to have the same cutoffs for best rates. In other words if 10 card issuers who use Classic tend to have an average cutoff of 740 (730-750 say), will ten issuers who use BE have a slightly higher cutoff on average (745 say with a spread of 730-760)? This given that BE's ceiling runs up to 900. What I'd like to hear (just on practical grounds) is that the difference, if one exists, is small.

Re: Discover scores?

SouthJamaica — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 16:29:37 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I have very little hard evidence, since I have only seen my EQ FICO 8 Classic and EQ FICO 8 BE pulled on the same day once. That was 18 months ago when I subscribed to the $30 myFICO product and then cancelled a week later.

The results were what you'd expect for a profile like mine. My Classic score was 836 and my BE was therefore higher at 854 (ceiling for Classic is 850 and celing for BE is 900).

That was back when I had 4 credit cards. I have added 7 more cards in the last 16 months, and you'd think that adding lots of credit cards would cause the BE score to be especially inclined to dive due to perceived risk, but it hasn't. It's gone down some but my TU Classic score (for example) has gone down more. I have always had ultralow utilization.

I will get to see another snapshot in early April when I add the $30 MF package again (and then cancel). I am curious to see what my mortgage scores are since all the new cards were added, and I will get to see my FICO 9 for the first time.

The thing I am most interested in is whether lenders who use the BE score rather than Classic tend to have the same cutoffs for best rates. In other words if 10 card issuers who use Classic tend to have an average cutoff of 740 (730-750 say), will ten issuers who use BE have a slightly higher cutoff on average (745 say with a spread of 730-760)? This given that BE's ceiling runs up to 900. What I'd like to hear (just on practical grounds) is that the difference, if one exists, is small.

Generally my Bankcard 8's run like this:

EX & TU around 30 points higher than my FICO 8

EQ around 10 points higher than my FICO 8

Re: Discover scores?

Revelate — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 16:34:41 GMT

Won't be consistent UW standards as those are set by individual lenders based on their individual datasets, and vary by product too in addition to in the time domain. Not really sure if it's meaningful given that it's not a single determination in UW so the FICO score is likely set "low" in many cases to let income and other things have a say.

If you have a well balanced file the two are pretty similar; reason code order is really the only way to suggest different weightings... and looking at a recent EX report that I pulled when my lien was off EX FICO 2 BC was complaining about my revolving balances in slot 4 (yawn) which was probably my HELOC balance vs EX FICO 2 baseline did not. I tend to trend marginally higher (+10 points or so) on various BC industry options, presumably from the fact it's scored out of 900.

Just noticed an idiosyncracy on the 1B report don't seem to get all of the reason codes for FICO 8 classic: that sucks.

Re: Discover scores?

Thomas_Thumb — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 17:07:49 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I have very little hard evidence, since I have only seen my EQ FICO 8 Classic and EQ FICO 8 BE pulled on the same day once. That was 18 months ago when I subscribed to the $30 myFICO product and then cancelled a week later.

The results were what you'd expect for a profile like mine. My Classic score was 836 and my BE was therefore higher at 854 (ceiling for Classic is 850 and celing for BE is 900).

That was back when I had 4 credit cards. I have added 7 more cards in the last 16 months, and you'd think that adding lots of credit cards would cause the BE score to be especially inclined to dive due to perceived risk, but it hasn't. It's gone down some but my TU Classic score (for example) has gone down more. I have always had ultralow utilization.

I will get to see another snapshot in early April when I add the $30 MF package again (and then cancel). I am curious to see what my mortgage scores are since all the new cards were added, and I will get to see my FICO 9 for the first time.

The thing I am most interested in is whether lenders who use the BE score rather than Classic tend to have the same cutoffs for best rates. In other words if 10 card issuers who use Classic tend to have an average cutoff of 740 (730-750 say), will ten issuers who use BE have a slightly higher cutoff on average (745 say with a spread of 730-760)? This given that BE's ceiling runs up to 900. What I'd like to hear (just on practical grounds) is that the difference, if one exists, is small.

Best I can tell is Bankcard enhanced version is somewhat more sensitive to number (or %) of cards reporting than is the Classic version. I would not expect adding new cards to negatively impact Fico Bankcard enhanced more than Fico Classic. Actually, BC enhanced should view a few more open accounts as a long term plus (even if there is a short term score drop).

CGID -

Experian data shows Fico 08 Bankcard enhanced and Classic scores track closely (for the population in aggregate) in the 20th to 70th percentile range (say scores between 600 and 780). Significant divergence between the algorithms becomes noticeable above 780 and below 580.

My EQ Fico 08 Bankcard score is typically 30 to 40 points above my EQ Fico 08 Classic

My TU and EX Fico 08 Bankcard scores are typically 40 to 50 points above their Classic counterparts.

Side note: It appears that all the Fico models were designed to converge at the 45th to 50th percentile with a score of 700 to 710. Based on the below curves, my guess is there may be no difference in "cutoff" for Fico 08 Classic vs Bankcard.

Re: Discover scores?

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 17:42:17 GMT

Thanks TT! Very helpful.