topic Re: Citi FICO scoring? in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Citi FICO scoring?

jdbkiang — Sat, 13 Oct 2018 15:49:19 GMT

So Citi sent me an email today saying my FICO is available on their website. Went and checked and they said it was an Equifax FICO 8 score, but the range was from 250-900. Is this trustworthy?

Re: Citi FICO scoring?

Anonymous — Sat, 13 Oct 2018 17:48:22 GMT

It's FICO Bankcard 8, not FICO 8.

Re: Citi FICO scoring?

jdbkiang — Sat, 13 Oct 2018 20:10:31 GMT

Ahh, good catch. So how useful is this scoring then?

Re: Citi FICO scoring?

Anonymous — Sat, 13 Oct 2018 20:20:10 GMT

It's useful in that some lenders might use the FICO bankcard version, also useful because free EQ FICO 8 is hard to come by so you can use this score to predict changes on your EQ FICO 8.

Re: Citi FICO scoring?

SouthJamaica — Sat, 13 Oct 2018 20:59:07 GMT

@jdbkiang wrote:
So Citi sent me an email today saying my FICO is available on their website. Went and checked and they said it was an Equifax FICO 8 score, but the range was from 250-900. Is this trustworthy?

Yes it's trustworthy. As others point out it's the EQ Bankcard 8, not the EQ Classic 8.

Re: Citi FICO scoring?

jdbkiang — Sat, 13 Oct 2018 22:10:24 GMT

So would this be closer to the EQ Classic than the Vantage Equifax score on CK?

Re: Citi FICO scoring?

iv — Sat, 13 Oct 2018 22:19:16 GMT

@jdbkiang wrote:
So would this be closer to the EQ Classic than the Vantage Equifax score on CK?

No. All three (EQ 8, EQ 8 Bankcard, and EQ VS3.0) are different score models.

"Closer" is not a meaningful term in this case. You can't use any one of these three scores to estimate any of the others with any reasonable accuracy. They are different. Different weighting, different min/max scales, different reason codes...

Re: Citi FICO scoring?

FireMedic1 — Sat, 13 Oct 2018 23:32:59 GMT

My profile its higher than my FICO 8. I'm 750 FICO 8, 761 FICO Bankcard 8. Guess FICO looks at credit cards in a different light. Someone here may know the protocol.

Re: Citi FICO scoring?

Revelate — Sun, 14 Oct 2018 00:03:48 GMT

@FireMedic1 wrote:
My profile its higher than my FICO 8. I'm 750 FICO 8, 761 FICO Bankcard 8. Guess FICO looks at credit cards in a different light. Someone here may know the protocol.

I don't think anyone has sufficient data to really diagnose the Bankcard industry options.

We got a few things on AU long ago over in the Auto Loans forums when a few F&I guys stopped by and gave some analysis of all the reports they'd seen and resulting scores but it's all anecdotal without any real testing behind it.

Generally speaking iv is correct, they are different; however, what's generally good for Classic scores are also good for the industry options like Bankcard and Auto too. Vantage that's not always the case.

Re: Citi FICO scoring?

Anonymous — Sun, 14 Oct 2018 00:14:49 GMT

@FireMedic1My profile its higher than my FICO 8. I'm 750 FICO 8, 761 FICO Bankcard 8. Guess FICO looks at credit cards in a different light. Someone here may know the protocol.

I believe the reason here is likely due to the 900 score cap on BCE 8 verses the 850 cap on Classic 8. From what I've seen, most people report their BCE 8 score as being higher than their Classic 8 score (both using EQ data of course). My BCE 8 is currently 875 compared to 847 on Classic 8, so a 28 point variance.

Re: Citi FICO scoring?

jdbkiang — Sun, 14 Oct 2018 04:16:21 GMT

Interesting--Thanks for the info, everyone. My Bankcard score is only like 7 points higher than my actual, which I hadn't checked yet this month.

Re: Citi FICO scoring?

Thomas_Thumb — Sun, 14 Oct 2018 15:43:10 GMT

@Revelate wrote:
@FireMedic1 wrote:
My profile its higher than my FICO 8. I'm 750 FICO 8, 761 FICO Bankcard 8. Guess FICO looks at credit cards in a different light. Someone here may know the protocol.
I don't think anyone has sufficient data to really diagnose the Bankcard industry options.

We got a few things on AU long ago over in the Auto Loans forums when a few F&I guys stopped by and gave some analysis of all the reports they'd seen and resulting scores but it's all anecdotal without any real testing behind it.

Generally speaking iv is correct, they are different; however, what's generally good for Classic scores are also good for the industry options like Bankcard and Auto too. Vantage that's not always the case.

Actually industry option Fico scores are Classic Fico scores + an industry adjuster (see below from Equifax). Given the 250 to 900 BCE score range vs 300 to 850 for Clasic, it appears the industry adjuster is +/- 50 points.

Re: Citi FICO scoring?

Thomas_Thumb — Sun, 14 Oct 2018 22:01:00 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@FireMedic1My profile its higher than my FICO 8. I'm 750 FICO 8, 761 FICO Bankcard 8. Guess FICO looks at credit cards in a different light. Someone here may know the protocol.
I believe the reason here is likely due to the 900 score cap on BCE 8 verses the 850 cap on Classic 8. From what I've seen, most people report their BCE 8 score as being higher than their Classic 8 score (both using EQ data of course). My BCE 8 is currently 875 compared to 847 on Classic 8, so a 28 point variance.

Here is some recent (2017) summary data from Experian and a graph comparing Classic scores to BCE scores. In general, Classic and Bankcard scores for all models converge around 700. Specific to Fico 8, BCE scores on average are higher above 750 and lower below 650.

...

Re: Citi FICO scoring?

Revelate — Sun, 14 Oct 2018 16:16:26 GMT

@Thomas_Thumb wrote:
@Revelate wrote:
@FireMedic1 wrote:
My profile its higher than my FICO 8. I'm 750 FICO 8, 761 FICO Bankcard 8. Guess FICO looks at credit cards in a different light. Someone here may know the protocol.
I don't think anyone has sufficient data to really diagnose the Bankcard industry options.

We got a few things on AU long ago over in the Auto Loans forums when a few F&I guys stopped by and gave some analysis of all the reports they'd seen and resulting scores but it's all anecdotal without any real testing behind it.

Generally speaking iv is correct, they are different; however, what's generally good for Classic scores are also good for the industry options like Bankcard and Auto too. Vantage that's not always the case.

Actually industry option Fico scores are Classic Fico scores + an industry adjuster (see below from Equifax). Given the 250 to 900 BCE score range vs 300 to 850 for Clasic, it appears the industry adjuster is +/- 50 points.

Well the scale is different to be sure; however, the Industry Adjuster is a black box as far as we know at this point given we just don't really have much data on the additional scorecards mentioned... though it is a good point that the scores are related pretty closely rather than being utterly different (which I think we all sort of knew).

iv is correct to state that there's some reason codes which don't exist in the Classic scores, vis a vis "You have no recent activity from an auto loan" which shows up on some of the Auto Enhanced models via presumably the Overlay Scorecards referenced there but not the baseline where installment = installment (mostly to one of your earlier points), and I would think from that if someone had no credit cards at all, they'd probably get whacked in the BC model similarly.

It's an interesting find and thank you for posting it, just not certain it really sheds much light on what the new scorecards are looking at unless I'm really not understanding the graphic... they are fundamentally different in that they are predicting the default rates for different classes of products.

Re: Citi FICO scoring?

Thomas_Thumb — Mon, 15 Oct 2018 15:36:55 GMT

The industry option versions use the Classic version for their core score. The additional reason codes are, IMO, associated with the industry adjuster. I suspect the "no auto loan" might be a primary reason I can't reach 900 on Auto 8 but can on Bankcard 8.

Yes, the industry adjuster specifics are not known. Even so, whatever strategy works for optimizing a Classic version will be valid strategy toward ensuring a high score on its industry option counterpart. Attribute weighting may be different and other factors come into play - such as the auto loan. Even so, auto loan age and B/L thresholds are probably scored the same way for Classic and the Auto counterpart.

The main point here is Fico 98, Fico 04, Fico 8 and Fico 9 are fundamentally different models from one another as is VantageScore. Industry option models, on the other hand, are fundamentally the same as their Classic counterpart because they utilize it as their core baseline.

This may be semantics but, that's my view of model relationships. For purposes of illustration note the very strong correlation between EX Classic 98 and EX Bankcard Fico 98. The same relationship holds for EQ Classic 04 and EQ Bankcard 04. This happens because BCE uses Classic as its core. Comparing BCE Fico 8 to BCE Fico 98 the trends diverge in opposite directions at times. This suggests independence between the models.

Note: Comparing Classic Fico 8 score trends to other score trends for the below graphs is a bit problematic due to the 850 buffer masking score responses.

...

Notes:

1) If anyone has a greater than 50 point difference between their Classic and industry option scores (same CRA, same Fico version & same point in time), then the industry adjuster for Fico 8 behaves differently than suggested above].

2) With older versions of Fico (Max Fico BCE - Max Fico Classic) real world < 50 so something else is likely in play.