topic Re: Credit Cards and Experian in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Credit Cards and Experian

Anonymous — Sat, 28 Jul 2018 03:41:46 GMT

Are bank-issued credit cards counted differently by FICO than other revolving accounts? I looked over my credit summary and noticed that Experian makes a distinction between the two when it comes to credit mix.

Re: Credit Cards and Experian

Anonymous — Sat, 28 Jul 2018 03:17:15 GMT

Experian makes a bunch of different credit monitoring tools and products: Credit Check Total, CreditWorks Basic, CreditWorks Premium, and others. Is that screenshot from one of those specific products?

Re: Credit Cards and Experian

Anonymous — Sat, 28 Jul 2018 03:36:37 GMT

Yeah. It's from Credit Works Basic.

Re: Credit Cards and Experian

Anonymous — Sat, 28 Jul 2018 04:14:54 GMT

Good to know. Well, the people who make a credit monitoring tool -- whether Credit Check Total or Credit Works or Credit Karma or Credit.com or myFICO Ultimate or the Discover Scorecard (etc.) -- are a different group of people from those who make the back-end scoring algorithm. Their front-end summary pages organize things in some way they like -- but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how the actual scoring algorithm works.

I'll admit to finding the screenshot you show us unhelpful even in terms of how CW's own developers intend it. It's unhelpful because I can't say for sure what they mean. Do they mean to display three non-overlapping categories? If so, then a better wording would be:

Bank-Issued Credit Card Accounts

Other Revolving accounts

Installment loans, including mortgages

As it is having one category called Revolving and another called BICCAs is confusing, since all BICCAs are Revolving.

But regardless whoever the CW developers are, they don't have any special insight into how the FICO algorithms work, which are a trade secret. That's even true about a credit monitoring tool like the mYFICO Ultimate. The people who program up its front end summary are not the same people who develop the secret back end algorithm. That's one of the reasons that the myFICO simulator is often so bad at actually predicting how the true algorithm works.

Re: Credit Cards and Experian

Anonymous — Sat, 28 Jul 2018 07:34:36 GMT

Another great example here from the OP where CMS fluff software can be misleading or confusing.

There is no difference at all between a revolving account and a bank issued CC. They are all revolvers and are all viewed the same way by the FICO algorithm.

Re: Credit Cards and Experian

Anonymous — Sun, 29 Jul 2018 20:54:08 GMT

Thanks. I figured all revolving cards were pretty much the same.