topic Re: Credit mix - what am I missing? in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Credit mix - what am I missing?

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 16:11:18 GMT

Experian presents a view of your score, by category.

My ratings in the categories are Good, Exceptional, Exceptional, Poor, and Very Good, as shown above in the, "Credit mix," category. Their graphic sort of implies that I'm missing something. My open accounts are:

2 mortgages

3 credit cards, as primary, shown in sig

1 credit card, as authorized user, on secured Cap1 M/C with CL of $851

What is required to move the bar in the Credit mix category to Exceptional?

Re: Credit mix - what am I missing?

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 16:56:58 GMT

There’s really nothing missing in terms of scoring factors. Possibly they feel more accounts would help. Mine shows Very Good also for the same factors. Don’t sweat it though - that verbiage is front-end fluff. The score numbers matter, not the descriptors. You have what you need.

Re: Credit mix - what am I missing?

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 17:00:26 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:

What is required to move the bar in the Credit mix category to Exceptional?

Great reply above siting the front-end fluff from CMS software. There is no moving to "exceptional" because it doesn't exist... none of those arbitrary categories exist really. Either your credit mix is maximized or it's not and in your case it is. You have revolvers and at least one open installment loan, so you're in the best place you can be with an ideal credit mix from the lens of the FICO algorithm.

Re: Credit mix - what am I missing?

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 17:51:36 GMT

ITD and BBS, thank you for the responses. Just wanted to ensure I had all of the bases covered.

Within the requirements backlog of Experian's website content product manager, there had to be some method to attain Exceptional in Experian's category rating? Despite the fluff of their made-up descriptions, I would agree with the assignment of their ratings to my other categories. I wonder if anyone out there in MyFico land has Exceptional in this category, and would be curious to learn about their credit mix.

Re: Credit mix - what am I missing?

SouthJamaica — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 18:08:41 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:

What is required to move the bar in the Credit mix category to Exceptional?

Great reply above siting the front-end fluff from CMS software. There is no moving to "exceptional" because it doesn't exist... none of those arbitrary categories exist really. Either your credit mix is maximized or it's not and in your case it is. You have revolvers and at least one open installment loan, so you're in the best place you can be with an ideal credit mix from the lens of the FICO algorithm.

Mine is "excellent" according to front-end fluff, but I have the same 3 entries as OP.

Re: Credit mix - what am I missing?

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 18:08:53 GMT

SJ, in that case, your rating of Excellent may be due to the enormity of your profile/portfolio.

Re: Credit mix - what am I missing?

SouthJamaica — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 18:10:30 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
SJ, in that case, your rating of Excellent may be due to the enormity of your profile/portfolio.

Maybe. But I wouldn't recommend anyone going for "enormity"

Re: Credit mix - what am I missing?

SouthJamaica — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 18:25:13 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
ITD and BBS, thank you for the responses. Just wanted to ensure I had all of the bases covered.

Within the requirements backlog of Experian's website content product manager, there had to be some method to attain Exceptional in Experian's category rating? Despite the fluff of their made-up descriptions, I would agree with the assignment of their ratings to my other categories. I wonder if anyone out there in MyFico land has Exceptional in this category, and would be curious to learn about their credit mix.

I have the exact same language on the EX site as you do, only mine is supposedly "exceptional" as opposed to "very good".

What my profile has is lots of open and closed credit cards, 1 open and 6 closed installment accounts, and some personal lines of credit which are listed as revolving accounts but might not be considered "bank" cards.

Re: Credit mix - what am I missing?

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 18:25:27 GMT

SJ, thank you for confirming the existence of Exceptional!

Over the next few years as I slowly rebuild, I will continue to check my, "Credit mix," rating. I do not plan to become SJJ (junior) though, so hopefully ~5 or so card accounts does the trick. We shall see!

Re: Credit mix - what am I missing?

SouthJamaica — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 18:27:49 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
SJ, thank you for confirming the existence of Exceptional!

Over the next few years as I slowly rebuild, I will continue to check my, "Credit mix," rating. I do not plan to become SJJ (junior) though, so hopefully ~5 or so card accounts does the trick. We shall see!

Thank goodness you are smarter than I am

Re: Credit mix - what am I missing?

Shooting-For-800 — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 19:23:49 GMT

Mine is exceptional. I have:

1 car loan

15 bank credit cards

4 store credit cards

maybe 8 student loans

NO mortgage

GL!

Re: Credit mix - what am I missing?

Remedios — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 19:25:47 GMT

@SouthJamaica wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
SJ, thank you for confirming the existence of Exceptional!

Over the next few years as I slowly rebuild, I will continue to check my, "Credit mix," rating. I do not plan to become SJJ (junior) though, so hopefully ~5 or so card accounts does the trick. We shall see!
Thank goodness you are smarter than I am

I dropped the phone and it fell on my face (again) when I read this. These giggles were exceptional. True story.

Re: Credit mix - what am I missing?

Remedios — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 19:30:49 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
SJ, thank you for confirming the existence of Exceptional!

Over the next few years as I slowly rebuild, I will continue to check my, "Credit mix," rating. I do not plan to become SJJ (junior) though, so hopefully ~5 or so card accounts does the trick. We shall see!

Well, SJ manages them well, so number is not an issue. He's also very helpful as you've witnessed in this thread, so maybe being SJJ would be an exceptional thing.

Re: Credit mix - what am I missing?

Caardvark — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 19:48:52 GMT

I definitely do not have the thick profile of SJJ but also have an "Exceptional" Mix. It does make one curious as to what makes one profile exceptional vs very good when they have the same attributes.

@Anonymous wrote:
ITD and BBS, thank you for the responses. Just wanted to ensure I had all of the bases covered.

Within the requirements backlog of Experian's website content product manager, there had to be some method to attain Exceptional in Experian's category rating? Despite the fluff of their made-up descriptions, I would agree with the assignment of their ratings to my other categories. I wonder if anyone out there in MyFico land has Exceptional in this category, and would be curious to learn about their credit mix.

Re: Credit mix - what am I missing?

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 21:17:35 GMT

I'mTheDevil made an interesting guess (post #2) which was that the front-end software might be including "number of accounts" as a scoring factor -- and if so, it might well be parking this in the Credit Mix category.

Although as BBS and others have observed, the programmers of any front-end summary page often invent scoring factors that do not exist at all inside the back-end algorithm that generates the score (or if they do exist, have a very different weight), there is in this case some evidence that "number of accounts" does in fact matter. Contributor Thomas Thumb and others have discussed this based on explicit negative reason statements that they see. Last I remember the guess was that a small penalty exists when you have only (say) 4-5 open accounts or if your total number of closed and open accounts together was fewer than (say) 9.

Curiously there also appears to be a small penalty (detected from an analysis of reason codes by Revelate) when you have too many accounts as well. The sweet spot may be something like at least 8 open accounts and at least 10 total accounts, but no more than 17 open accounts.

PS. When a person's "number of accounts" is quite small (e.g. 1-3 accounts) then it can have a far more pronounced effect on that person's score, by shunting him into a scorecard reserved for very "thin" profiles. Our OP has enough accounts to not be considered thin in that sense.

Re: Credit mix - what am I missing?

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 20:49:02 GMT

@Remedios - please don't interpret my comment as disrepsecting SJ - feel quite the opposite.

@Anonymous wrote:
Last I remember the guess was that a small penalty exists when you have only (say) 4-5 open accounts or if your total number of closed and open accounts together was fewer than (say) 9.

Curiously there also appears to be a small penalty (detected from an analysis of reason codes by Revelate) when you have too many accounts as well. The sweet spot may be something like at least 8 open accounts and at least 10 total accounts, but no more than 17 open accounts.

CGID, that is very interesting info. My Very Good rating includes 6 Open accounts and 9 Closed. Just for yucks I checked DW, and she has 4 Open, 5 Closed and is also rated Very Good for Credit mix. Aligns with your analysis.

Re: Credit mix - what am I missing?

Caardvark — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 21:52:54 GMT

Interesting theory. I do have 9 open accounts

Re: Credit mix - what am I missing?

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 21:55:51 GMT

Yep, same rating as OP with 13 open and 7 closed.

Re: Credit mix - what am I missing?

SouthJamaica — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 21:58:51 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Remedios - please don't interpret my comment as disrepsecting SJ - feel quite the opposite.

I certainly didn't interpret it that way @Anonymous and I'm sure @Remedios didn't either

Re: Credit mix - what am I missing?

Remedios — Mon, 22 Apr 2019 22:06:41 GMT

@Anonymous I did not interpret it as disrespect. While i really meant what I said about SJ, rest was a joke involved abundant use of the word "excellent", mainly because I find those descriptors useless.

While they do tell you that everything is not optimized, they offer very little guidance on why.

Hope that clarifies it.