topic Re: Few accounts paid on time in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Few accounts paid on time

Ardecko — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 22:17:28 GMT

I have this reason message(Few accounts paid on time) on all three of my negatives on my Experian 3 bureau score report.

On my CCT provided 3 score report, I have a paragraph like this:

Your FICO® Score considers the number of accounts where you are paying your bills as agreed - in your case this number is too low. This is because you have very few accounts or because you've missed payments recently on some of your accounts.

I believe these two messages are probably tied to the same reason code, just explained differently on the score report.

On each report, I have 2 open cards(brand new, one last month and one this month), an open mortgage, and an open auto loan(opened June 2017).

There is also a closed mortgage account with 20ish late payments from when I lost my job(and fought depression). Time since last negative is 3y 9m.

The newer mortgage backdated itself to the start date of my original mortgage, so AAoA is 5y 9m, and AoOA is 14y 3m.

Is this reason code here because:

a) there's not enough payment history on the new accounts?

b) there's still not enough accounts overall?

c) the 20ish late payments on the old mortage?

d) some combination of the above

e) something else entirely?

Appreciate any insight, I could not find where this had been discussed on board.

alwaysRe: Few accounts paid on time

jbh — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 22:40:01 GMT

I wouldn't put too much thought in it. One poster here, Thomas Thumb, has a 850 score and mentioned his Experian and Eq stated he needs to eat more fiber. It always has to find something to complain about.

On a serious side, I wonder if it simply needs a few more cc's. I will find out for sure as it was always a #1 ding for me when I had a thin file. After an app spree last month I will see if it continues.

Re: alwaysRe: Few accounts paid on time

tricie17 — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 23:10:42 GMT

It is a very odd code. I pay all of my accounts on time each month and my code have been saying that constantly. I just let the bureau's run their little game unless it is a major thing.

Re: Few accounts paid on time

Ardecko — Sat, 23 Sep 2017 00:34:15 GMT

I have 4 negative factors showing on EQ and 3 on the other two. I don't think it was a "quick! grab something random to fill this space". I'll check my oldest report (June 17, before the auto loan and two cards) and see if it's on that one.

Re: Few accounts paid on time

Anonymous — Sat, 23 Sep 2017 07:53:51 GMT

@Ardecko wrote:

Is this reason code here because:
a) there's not enough payment history on the new accounts?
b) there's still not enough accounts overall?
c) the 20ish late payments on the old mortage?
d) some combination of the above
e) something else entirely?

Basically, "c" from your list above. Any time you have a dirty account, that's all it takes to generate that reason code. Anything > 0 is too many. Whether you have 4 clean accounts or 40 clean accounts to go along with that 1 dirty account may not matter. I'm not sure whether or not FICO considers percentages at all when giving that reason code, but if it does certainly having 20% or so of the accounts on your credit report as not paid as agreed is a significant number.

Re: alwaysRe: Few accounts paid on time

Anonymous — Sat, 23 Sep 2017 07:57:09 GMT

@jbh wrote:
I wouldn't put too much thought in it. One poster here, Thomas Thumb, has a 850 score and mentioned his Experian and Eq stated he needs to eat more fiber. It always has to find something to complain about.

I wouldn't say that's always the case. On the 2 bureaus I'm clean on, CCT under factors hurting my score it reads, "no factors available."

Re: alwaysRe: Few accounts paid on time

HeavenOhio — Sat, 23 Sep 2017 12:51:31 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
On the 2 bureaus I'm clean on, CCT under factors hurting my score it reads, "no factors available."

I get the equivalent of "no factors available" on myFICO whenever I'm above 800. When I'm just below 800, they seem to pick reasons out of a hat.

Re: alwaysRe: Few accounts paid on time

Revelate — Sat, 23 Sep 2017 18:21:46 GMT

@HeavenOhio wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
On the 2 bureaus I'm clean on, CCT under factors hurting my score it reads, "no factors available."
I get the equivalent of "no factors available" on myFICO whenever I'm above 800. When I'm just below 800, they seem to pick reasons out of a hat.

All of the reason codes I've ever had have always made sense, dirty file, clean file, they weren't nonsense... they just weren't always very helpful as half or more of the reason codes across every EQ/EX score for me boil down to "you should've established your credit a lot earlier."

I asked Cindy about the myFICO product, their opinion is reason codes after a certain level were unhelpful and confusing and they're probably right.... so they discard them.

Re: alwaysRe: Few accounts paid on time

Anonymous — Sun, 24 Sep 2017 03:47:34 GMT

Another thing with reason codes. I think that many people assume that if one is present that whatever it says must be significantly impacting their score. While surely there are reason codes that may be pointing to reasons that a score is 50-75 points down, such as "you recently missed a payment" there are plenty of others that perhaps are only impacting a score a little bit, so it may not be necessary to sweat each and every one all too much.

Re: alwaysRe: Few accounts paid on time

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 21:35:08 GMT

The "reasons" can make sense - on some level, but a lot of the time they don't. I have literally had positive and negative "reasons" that directly opposed each other - positive saying, as an example, that revolving credit usage was low and having a positive impact, and I'd ALSO have that my revolving credit usage was too high and having a negative impact.

Go figure.

I can find reasons for both (say, I paid off one card, so that had low usage, but didn't pay another off with a higher balance), but the way the "reasons" are stated is silly as they would say exactly the opposite things.

Re: alwaysRe: Few accounts paid on time

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 22:18:20 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
The "reasons" can make sense - on some level, but a lot of the time they don't. I have literally had positive and negative "reasons" that directly opposed each other - positive saying, as an example, that revolving credit usage was low and having a positive impact, and I'd ALSO have that my revolving credit usage was too high and having a negative impact.

Go figure.

I can find reasons for both (say, I paid off one card, so that had low usage, but didn't pay another off with a higher balance), but the way the "reasons" are stated is silly as they would say exactly the opposite things.

My understanding is that the positive reason statements are a completely different animal than the negative reason statements.

The negative reason statements are truly generated by the scoring algorithm itself -- if you see them then in theory it means that the algorithm really deducted 1 or more points from your maximum score because of that reason.

The positive reason statements, in contrast, are the opinion of some programmer who wrote the software surrounding the credit monitoring product you are using -- they represent his belief about what looks good about your profile. The actual scoring algorithm (FICO 8, FICO 04, FICO 9 Bankcard Enhanced, etc.) is not generating those reason statements, however.

That's my understanding at any rate. Revelate or Thomas Thumb or others can comment better.

Re: alwaysRe: Few accounts paid on time

HeavenOhio — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 22:26:59 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Another thing with reason codes. I think that many people assume that if one is present that whatever it says must be significantly impacting their score. While surely there are reason codes that may be pointing to reasons that a score is 50-75 points down, such as "you recently missed a payment" there are plenty of others that perhaps are only impacting a score a little bit, so it may not be necessary to sweat each and every one all too much.

How about no score impact? I get the "too many cards reporting balances" reason, even when my score doesn't care that a second card reports a balance.

Re: alwaysRe: Few accounts paid on time

Anonymous — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 02:35:02 GMT

@HeavenOhio wrote:
How about no score impact? I get the "too many cards reporting balances" reason, even when my score doesn't care that a second card reports a balance.

Excellent example and you are very correct.

Great point in the post from CGID above as well where he talks about the difference between positive and negative reason codes. I understand this topic exactly as he does. Rev schooled me many months ago on the irrelevance of positive reason codes and that the negative ones are all that definitely matter with respect to scoring.