topic Re: Highest AoYA threshold? in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Highest AoYA threshold?

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 15:29:19 GMT

I feel like AoOA is discussed most with respect to score card assignment and potential thresholds. While most don't seem to know exact thresholds, it's speculated that somewhere around 17 years may be the ceiling, where everything else above that is gravy. It's also thought I think by most that there have got to be some thresholds along the way, although being to identify them is no doubt a challenge.

My question is more about AoYA, score card assignment and thresholds with this factor. It's well-documented that crossing from below 1 year AoYA to 1+ year is an important threshold. Is there another at 2 years? At what point does this factor reach its ceiling and the rest is just gravy? I would think it's considerably less than the AoOA factor. I'd imagine if someone hasn't opened a new account in 3 or maybe 5 years max that they'd be considered as low risk as possible relative to that factor. I'd like to hear from those that know more about this subject, or even those that would just like to speculate like I just have.

Re: Highest AoYA threshold?

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 17:09:11 GMT

I received a big boost in a number of models when my Age of Youngest Account (AoYA) went from 11 to 12 months. (My profile is very stable and always had the same FICO 8 score for month 8, 9, 10, and 11.)

For TU FICO 8 that was 825 to 850.

For EQ FICO 04 (the EQ mortgage score) it went from 776 to 817. This is much more significant than you might think, since it is one point away from a perfect score. (A perfect score in the EQ mortgage model is 818.) A portion of that huge jump may have to do with a couple inquiries falling off in Jan/Feb of this year (correponding to months 11/12) but I can't tease out the difference since I get my mortgage scores only once a year (at most).

I am personally skeptical that there could be any benefit to having an AoYA greater than 24 months, and there may be no benefit after crossing the 12 month line. It's also quite possible that some FICO models give a 24 month benefit and others stop at 12.

In the non-FICO LexisiNexis model, which tends to be more punitive of new accounts than is FICO, it stops at month 24.

Worth observing that the effect on dirty profiles may be much less (if at all). That's because AoYA affects scorecard asignment with clean profiles and may have no effect on dirty profiles (Thomas Thumb would know more about that).

Re: Highest AoYA threshold?

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 21:24:57 GMT

I hear you. So then, you're thinking that the max the ceiling may be is at 24 months, but quite possibly max scoring benefit is realized at 12 months.

That's actually pretty good news, as I would have thought for top-notch gain one would have to go 3+ years without opening an account. I suppose when assessing risk, there likely wouldn't be much of a difference between someone that hasn't taken on a new account in say 1.5 years verses 3 years, so I sort of get it.

Re: Highest AoYA threshold?

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 21:28:02 GMT

Before I add any speculation based on my scores over the last few years I would like to confirm the day/date that age thresholds are crossed for all 3 bureaus on fico 8.

I had previously assumed that Transunion and Equifax used the actual opening dates in age calculations and only Experian was based on the first of the month no matter which day the accounts were actually opened since that is the opening date given when viewing my credit reports. I recently read on here that all 3 bureaus use the first of the month for aging except for inquiries that use the actual day of the month it occurred.

As an example a youngest account opened on 8/16/14. Would the AoYA be 1 year on 8/1/15 or 8/16/15 or 9/1/15? My current understanding is 8/1/15.

Thanks in advance.

Re: Highest AoYA threshold?

jamie123 — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 22:08:43 GMT

Last year I bought a house and closed on February 10, 2017. I came home from the closing and apped for and received 3 credit cards. This meant that I had 4 new accounts for the past year and my EQ FICO 8 score hovered around 720+ or - a few points during that year.

My EQ score was 717 on 3/31/18. On 4/3/18 my EQ score jumped 46 points without any credit cards reporting that day. The mortgage and the 3 new cards turned more than 1 year old at that point and my oldest card turned 6 years old.

The only thing that I can reason for my score boost is the loss of the 3 credit card inquiries, the 3 credit cards and mortgage turning more than 1 year old and my oldest card turning 6 years old. Could the aging really account for 46 points?

I have a total of 10 credit cards now, the mortgage, an 18 month auto loan and 2 closed SSLs on my reports so the 4 new accounts really hit my scores pretty hard when they reported.

Re: Highest AoYA threshold?

Remedios — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 22:29:57 GMT

08/01 is correct.

Re: Highest AoYA threshold?

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 01:02:57 GMT

@jamie123Last year I bought a house and closed on February 10, 2017. I came home from the closing and apped for and received 3 credit cards. This meant that I had 4 new accounts for the past year and my EQ FICO 8 score hovered around 720+ or - a few points during that year.

My EQ score was 717 on 3/31/18. On 4/3/18 my EQ score jumped 46 points without any credit cards reporting that day. The mortgage and the 3 new cards turned more than 1 year old at that point and my oldest card turned 6 years old.

I'm a bit confused as to your timeline above. You stated you closed on a house on 2/10/17 and then came home and apped for 3 CCs. If taken literally, that means you apped for the CCs on 2/10/17 - Is that correct, or did you wait a bit? The reason I ask is because your AoYA would have hit 1 year on 2/1/18 if that were the case (if you opened all of the accounts any time in Feb 2017). That being said, you're saying that your score didn't increase 46 points until 4/3/18, over 2 months later. A lot can happen in 2 months for one thing, but the inquiries would have already been unscoreable from Feb 2017 and your AoYA would have been 14 months on 4/3/18. My point here is that I don't believe based on the timeline of events that you provided that your 46 point increase a week ago was due to these 2 factors (inquiries, AoYA). Had you pulled your credit scores at all in Jan/Feb/Mar of this year?

Re: Highest AoYA threshold?

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 01:29:39 GMT

edit... deleted duplicate post originally auto flagged as spam

Re: Highest AoYA threshold?

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 23:39:48 GMT

@Remedios wrote:
08/01 is correct.

Thanks for the confirmation using my hypothetical example.

When my AoYA crossed the 1 year mark I only had monthly fico scores from Transunion fico 8 and Equifax fico 5 (mortgage score). These scores also did not come with any utilization or balance information so I have been unable to isolate fico 8 individual scoring factors prior to december 2015 when my TU scores became much more consistent and predictable.

My AoYA crossed 1 year in October 2015, but I did not see a big jump of 29 points on TU fico 8 until December 2015 when my oldest account crossed 6 years. So I believe jamie123 and I may have both experienced a rebucketing event when AoOA was 6 years and AoYA was 1 year.

I also did not see an increase for AoYA of 2 or 3 years on TU and EX. I only have sporadic data on EQ fico 8 so I can't speculate much on that score.

Sorry I can't be more help on this particular topic.

Re: Highest AoYA threshold?

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 01:04:56 GMT

Interesting regarding the potential threshold for AoOA at 6 years.

Has anyone experienced any gains at all from AoYA hitting 2 years? I'm wondering if all points are realized at the 1 year mark, or if there are some left on the table for the 2 year mark.

Re: Highest AoYA threshold?

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 04:22:43 GMT

3 of my 4 credit cards were opened in June, 2017, the other one being around 6 months older. I'll try to remember to report in here if I see a jump. The hard pulls should die out around then, so I'm not sure how I could distinguish that from an AoYA bump.

Re: Highest AoYA threshold?

jamie123 — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 06:50:16 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Interesting regarding the potential threshold for AoOA at 6 years.

Has anyone experienced any gains at all from AoYA hitting 2 years? I'm wondering if all points are realized at the 1 year mark, or if there are some left on the table for the 2 year mark.

Yeah, I follow my scores all the time. I use MyFICO for my EQ but most of my credit cards offer free delayed scores too. It was a really weird MyFICO alert that said, "Your FICO score has increased from 717 to 763." Inside the alert it stated, "Your score may be affected by additional information in your credit report". I don't recall ever seeing an alert that wasn't triggered by some other reporting event.

I waited 6 days until 4/9/18 and then pulled a MyFICO 3B report. I wanted to make sure that whatever happened on 4/3/18 with the EQ score caught up with all my reports. The only triggers for the large score boost that I could see would be the ages of my credit cards. For sure my oldest card (It's also my oldest account.) turned 6 years old on April 1st. Perhaps that could be the triggering event? Do you think that having my oldest account turn 6 years old caused a rebucketing?

My reports are 100% clean. All my scores took a big jump. You can see what they are as of now in my siggy below.

(Could somebody point the way and show me how to post images from imgur? I have screenshots that I could post.)

Re: Highest AoYA threshold?

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 13:14:10 GMT

@Anonymous3 of my 4 credit cards were opened in June, 2017, the other one being around 6 months older. I'll try to remember to report in here if I see a jump. The hard pulls should die out around then, so I'm not sure how I could distinguish that from an AoYA bump.

HPs become unscoreable at exactly the 1 year mark, where the age of an account increases by 1 month on the 1st of every month.

Say you took a HP on the 13th of January from opening an account. That HP would become unscoreable on the 13th of the following January, where that account would reach 12 months on the 1st of the following January. This would give you a little less than 2 weeks to pull your scores after AoYA hits 1 year but before the inquiry becomes unscoreable, thus allowing a clean data point distinguishing between the two events.

Re: Highest AoYA threshold?

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 13:28:25 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Worth observing that the effect on dirty profiles may be much less (if at all). That's because AoYA affects scorecard asignment with clean profiles and may have no effect on dirty profiles (Thomas Thumb would know more about that).

I don't think this can be true. I am in a dirty profile (9 90 day lates), and this month I got 19-32 FICO 8 point gains with the only significant change to my profile was 3 CC and 1 auto loan hitting 3 month mark (opened Jan).

Re: Highest AoYA threshold?

Thomas_Thumb — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 18:20:40 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I received a big boost in a number of models when my Age of Youngest Account (AoYA) went from 11 to 12 months. (My profile is very stable and always had the same FICO 8 score for month 8, 9, 10, and 11.)

For TU FICO 8 that was 825 to 850.

For EQ FICO 04 (the EQ mortgage score) it went from 776 to 817. This is much more significant than you might think, since it is one point away from a perfect score. (A perfect score in the EQ mortgage model is 818.) A portion of that huge jump may have to do with a couple inquiries falling off in Jan/Feb of this year (correponding to months 11/12) but I can't tease out the difference since I get my mortgage scores only once a year (at most).

I am personally skeptical that there could be any benefit to having an AoYA greater than 24 months, and there may be no benefit after crossing the 12 month line. It's also quite possible that some FICO models give a 24 month benefit and others stop at 12.

In the non-FICO LexisiNexis model, which tends to be more punitive of new accounts than is FICO, it stops at month 24.

Worth observing that the effect on dirty profiles may be much less (if at all). That's because AoYA affects scorecard asignment with clean profiles and may have no effect on dirty profiles (Thomas Thumb would know more about that).

CGID - Awesome score. That's something I'll never get to on EQ Fico 04 - I plateau is 809 perhaps due to multiple cards always reporting balances. How many open cards do you have and how many reported a balance when EQ Fico 04 reported yout 817 score?

AoYA is not a scorecard assignment factor for dirty scorecards. However, that does not mean AoYA and QTY of "opened recently" accounts won't affect score. As we know, they are a scoring factor based on reason statements. I believe the scorecard threshold is 12 months. In contrast, there are likely are multiple thresholds for recent as a scoring factor - the 1st one being at 3 months IMO.

Re: Highest AoYA threshold?

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 19:13:49 GMT

Could it also be that based on score card assignment (signal strength) that a dirty file may react a bit different than a clean file at any certain point, such as AoYA reaching 3 months?

Re: Highest AoYA threshold?

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 20:06:10 GMT

I had 13 cards with exactly 1 reporting a positive balance ($20). I have two open loans (student loan and an SSL) with an installment utilization of about 5%

So 3 accounts out of 15 reporting a balance, and 1 out of 13 cards. I think your research suggested the EQ mortgage score might like seeing a lot of $0 balance open cards with ideally only 1 positive.

Re: Highest AoYA threshold?

Anonymous — Thu, 12 Apr 2018 02:44:06 GMT

Okay, then. The simulator may be tracking that aspect, too (separating the HP falloff & AoYA bumps). 2 of the accounts opened on June 1st. The third opened on June, 5th.

The simulator (based on my 04/07 score) gives me a 5 point bump in July & another 10 point bump in August.

Not sure how much stock to put into the simulator, but that's 2 separate bumps a month apart, just over a year after my youngest 3 accounts opened.

Re: Highest AoYA threshold?

Anonymous — Thu, 12 Apr 2018 04:39:09 GMT

Simulators are junk, so I'd suggest ignoring them. They don't take into account nearly enough pieces of data to give a near accurate prediction in most cases.

Re: Highest AoYA threshold?

Anonymous — Thu, 12 Apr 2018 06:26:21 GMT

I am very curious about the accuracy of the myfico simulator in regards to account aging. I am not sure if I want it to be accurate or not. It only predicted 5 increases total between the three bureaus over the next 2 years for me. The first test will be next month when it predicted +5 on EQ. The other increases were in 11/18, 5/19, 11/19, and 12/19. I have gained points for aging in May, November, and December in the past so it doesn't seem completely implossible to me. However, I will probably add some more accounts before waiting for all of these increases to occur and that will change when the AoYA and AAoA thresholds are crossed.