topic Re: Ahhh, the ever elusive CFA comment in General Credit Topics

Ahhh, the ever elusive CFA comment

pizza1 — Sun, 13 Jan 2019 21:35:12 GMT

Interesting! Got my Risk Based price sheet from USAA on my CC approval, and last reason is the CFA. Ive not seen this before (for me), on denials/approvals until now. Is this specific to USAA? and/or EX and specific scoring model??

It also states "too many", in meaning more than 1 or several?

I looked thru my recent EX report, and I DO have one account showing that is probaly the culprit......One Main Financial...codes as "unsecured". (will drop off in 2022), and Its a postiive account.

Other accounts that are "possibles" are:

~Nebraska Furniture Mart..but codes as "CC"

~Discover Financial...codes as "CC"

~Old Fingerhut account(Web Bank)...codes as "CC"

I agree with all the reasons...I have BK showing, lots of new acts and INQ...not surprised there on any of that.

Re: Ahhh, the ever elusive CFA comment

DaveInAZ — Sun, 13 Jan 2019 21:34:08 GMT

When I had a Prosper loan 2014-2015 on my TU Fico score - and only on TU - I would see "too many consumer finance accounts" as a reason hurting my score. But I've never seen that message on a credit denial/approval. I was glad to payoff that loan and get rid of the message.

Re: Ahhh, the ever elusive CFA comment

pizza1 — Sun, 13 Jan 2019 21:29:01 GMT

@DaveInAZ wrote:
When I had a Prosper loan 2014-2015 on my TU Fico score - and only on TU - I would see "too many consumer finance accounts" as a reson hurting my score. But I've never seen that message on a credit denial/approval. I was glad to payoff that loan and get rid of the message.

The interesting part about that is the one acct I have on EX "One Main Financial" is a closed acct, and has been since 2012, in good standing. its not an open account. Matter of fact, none of the accounts that I listed above are open. They are all closed/in good standing.

Re: Ahhh, the ever elusive CFA comment

DaveInAZ — Sun, 13 Jan 2019 21:45:17 GMT

Ah, I missed that, you did say it will fall off in 2022 which indicates a 2012 closure.

Very strange USAA would mention too many CFAs for a closed account, must be a USAA thing, I'm not eligible but I've read they are very particular. But's not a EX thing as it was only TU that gave me the "too many CFAs", and apparently they consider 1 as 'too many'. And in my opinion it's strange for any CRA or creditor to be so negative on personal loans, the majority of folks get them to pay off high interest CCs and get their finances in better shape. I got my Prosper loan to payoff a CC balance that was going to become 22% instead of 0%, and then with better credit I got a new CC with 15 month 0% BT offer and used that to pay off Prosper two & a half years early, and with 0% was able to payoff the CC in 15 months.

Re: Ahhh, the ever elusive CFA comment

pizza1 — Sun, 13 Jan 2019 21:55:08 GMT

@DaveInAZ wrote:
Ah, I missed that, you did say it will fall off in 2022 which indicates a 2012 closure.
Very strange USAA would mention too many CFAs for a closed account, must be a USAA thing, I'm not eligible but I've read they are very particular. But's not a EX thing as it was only TU that gave me the "too many CFAs", and apparently they consider 1 as 'too many'. And in my opinion it's strange for any CRA or creditor to be so negative on personal loans, the majority of folks get them to pay off high interest CCs and get their finances in better shape. I got my Prosper loan to payoff a CC balance that was going to become 22% instead of 0%, and then with better credit I got a new CC with 15 month 0% BT offer and used that to pay off Prosper two & a half years early, and with 0% was able to payoff the CC in 15 months.

mmmm, so is it the "loan" itself , or the "name" associated with the loan thats causing these comments? If its the "loan" itself, does that extend to all loans? car, personal, school. etc... I have 2 open loans (PF personal, and school loan), but I have 3 closed loans. All in good standing/positive. mmmm, another FICO mystery, lol

Re: Ahhh, the ever elusive CFA comment

Brian_Earl_Spilner — Sun, 13 Jan 2019 22:03:32 GMT

I believe, it's attached to a lender and/or location. So, if you got an Affirm loan using a virtual card to buy something from Best Buy, it would be a CFA, while getting an Affirm loan with Motorola, who they are a captive lender for, would not. Thats my hypothesis as not every Affirm loan flags as a CFA.

Re: Ahhh, the ever elusive CFA comment

pizza1 — Sun, 13 Jan 2019 22:12:14 GMT

@Brian_Earl_Spilner wrote:
I believe, it's attached to a lender and/or location. So, if you got an Affirm loan using a virtual card to buy something from Best Buy, it would be a CFA, while getting an Affirm loan with Motorola, who they are a captive lender for, would not. Thats my hypothesis as not every Affirm loan flags as a CFA.

So, going with your theory here....my "names" associated or attached to the open and closed loans I have are....Penfed (open/personal), Commerce Bank (closed/car), NFCU ( closed/car), FedLoan servicing ( open/school), One Main Financial (closed/personal) . I'm gonna guess its the One main Financial in my case. Will be interesting to see once it drops from reports if was the one

Re: Ahhh, the ever elusive CFA comment

DaveInAZ — Sun, 13 Jan 2019 22:18:18 GMT

@pizza1 wrote:
mmmm, so is it the "loan" itself , or the "name" associated with the loan thats causing these comments? If its the "loan" itself, does that extend to all loans? car, personal, school. etc... I have 2 open loans (PF personal, and school loan), but I have 3 closed loans. All in good standing/positive. mmmm, another FICO mystery, lol

Hmmm, interesting question. My guess is the "name", because for One Main Financial, Prosper, etc. personal loans/finance are their primary business. For a personal loan from a credit union, Amex, Discover, etc. personal loans are not their primary business so the CRAs/creditors don't pick it up.

On a side note, for my Penfed Home Equity Line of Credit only EQ places it in Mortgage loans, TU & EX lump it in CCs as a revolver account. I wish they'd all count it as a Mortgage, since I didn't reaffirm my mortgage in my 2010 BK7 - which I still pay - I don't have any mortgage loans except the HELOC on credit reports.

Re: Ahhh, the ever elusive CFA comment

Anonymous — Sun, 13 Jan 2019 23:37:36 GMT

Interesting comment from USAA. For myself, I did find that a Wells Fargo Financial Visa Card (27% purchases Apr) triggered the CFA comment from creditors and I had no clue what was going on. The comments did not prevent me from obtaining credit. Left me confused until I figured out what it was all about. The card still reports on the cb's but, is not affecting the scores now!

Re: Ahhh, the ever elusive CFA comment

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Jan 2019 02:31:49 GMT

@Brian_Earl_Spilner wrote:
I believe, it's attached to a lender and/or location. So, if you got an Affirm loan using a virtual card to buy something from Best Buy, it would be a CFA, while getting an Affirm loan with Motorola, who they are a captive lender for, would not. Thats my hypothesis as not every Affirm loan flags as a CFA.

Everyone who says they don’t have CFA reason codes with their Affirm loans has lower scores from what I’ve seen so it’s also quite likely that the CFA isn’t impactful enough versus the other key factors to be in the list. We will have to see what happens as people who don’t currently see it get up in the 700s.

Re: Ahhh, the ever elusive CFA comment

Brian_Earl_Spilner — Mon, 14 Jan 2019 04:19:13 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Brian_Earl_Spilner wrote:
I believe, it's attached to a lender and/or location. So, if you got an Affirm loan using a virtual card to buy something from Best Buy, it would be a CFA, while getting an Affirm loan with Motorola, who they are a captive lender for, would not. Thats my hypothesis as not every Affirm loan flags as a CFA.
Everyone who says they don’t have CFA reason codes with their Affirm loans has lower scores from what I’ve seen so it’s also quite likely that the CFA isn’t impactful enough versus the other key factors to be in the list. We will have to see what happens as people who don’t currently see it get up in the 700s.

My score wasn't impacted when my Affirm loan reported. It also doesn't carry a CFA tag in any way.

Re: Ahhh, the ever elusive CFA comment

Pikaboo-icu — Mon, 14 Jan 2019 04:25:14 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Brian_Earl_Spilner wrote:
I believe, it's attached to a lender and/or location. So, if you got an Affirm loan using a virtual card to buy something from Best Buy, it would be a CFA, while getting an Affirm loan with Motorola, who they are a captive lender for, would not. Thats my hypothesis as not every Affirm loan flags as a CFA.
Everyone who says they don’t have CFA reason codes with their Affirm loans has lower scores from what I’ve seen so it’s also quite likely that the CFA isn’t impactful enough versus the other key factors to be in the list. We will have to see what happens as people who don’t currently see it get up in the 700s.

As you know Saeren, I believe you may be onto something there..

@Brian_Earl_Spilner wrote:

My score wasn't impacted when my Affirm loan reported. It also doesn't carry a CFA tag in any way.

Mine do and they are painful!! All closed postive, ALL count against my score..

CFAs! Eeeks! They haunt me in my nightmares and through my EX score..

I'm hard at work trying to eradicate them..

We shall see what they've been costing me, if/when they get removed, fingers crossed..

Re: Ahhh, the ever elusive CFA comment

Brian_Earl_Spilner — Mon, 14 Jan 2019 04:23:09 GMT

@pizza1 wrote:
@Brian_Earl_Spilner wrote:
I believe, it's attached to a lender and/or location. So, if you got an Affirm loan using a virtual card to buy something from Best Buy, it would be a CFA, while getting an Affirm loan with Motorola, who they are a captive lender for, would not. Thats my hypothesis as not every Affirm loan flags as a CFA.
So, going with your theory here....my "names" associated or attached to the open and closed loans I have are....Penfed (open/personal), Commerce Bank (closed/car), NFCU ( closed/car), FedLoan servicing ( open/school), One Main Financial (closed/personal) . I'm gonna guess its the One main Financial in my case. Will be interesting to see once it drops from reports if was the one

It almost most certainly is One Main. But any loan can get a CFA tag. There are people complaining that their Honda and Toyota loans are tagged as CFAs. Imagine getting a 0 or 1.9% loan only to find out your credit will take a hit for the next 14 years because it's considered a CFA?

Re: Ahhh, the ever elusive CFA comment

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Jan 2019 10:35:00 GMT

@Brian_Earl_Spilner wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@Brian_Earl_Spilner wrote:
I believe, it's attached to a lender and/or location. So, if you got an Affirm loan using a virtual card to buy something from Best Buy, it would be a CFA, while getting an Affirm loan with Motorola, who they are a captive lender for, would not. Thats my hypothesis as not every Affirm loan flags as a CFA.
Everyone who says they don’t have CFA reason codes with their Affirm loans has lower scores from what I’ve seen so it’s also quite likely that the CFA isn’t impactful enough versus the other key factors to be in the list. We will have to see what happens as people who don’t currently see it get up in the 700s.
My score wasn't impacted when my Affirm loan reported. It also doesn't carry a CFA tag in any way.

But there are certain thresholds where your credit doesn’t get damaged from certain changes because it’s already damaged from others. For example in my case, I didn’t take any score losses for new accounts since my initial losses when I added 3 in March. I also recovered all of the lost points by September and didn’t take any loss on any of the three bureaus when I added NFCU in September, the CLOC in December, the Sync Amazon reported on January 2nd, I didn’t even take any more points for inquiries. Now that my FICO is at 706 on TU, I bet that I will lose 10-20 points when my BBVA, NFCU Plat, and PayPal cards report.

CFA seems like a relatively minor black eye compared to other ones and the reason why it’s impacting Pika so much is likely because of how many she has being added to her reports and also they’re likely being scored incorrectly since they’re being retroactively added to boot.

Its all a guessing game, nobody knows until their key factors clear up as their score goes up, but logic would seem to dictate that if one loan is tagged CFA from a lender, all loans have to be, since CRAs are regulated. If they are treating CFAs in a non-uniform manner from profile to profile, they open themselves up to potential lawsuits since as we have seen with Pika and Revelate, these loans can be very costly to otherwise great scores.

Re: Ahhh, the ever elusive CFA comment

Brian_Earl_Spilner — Mon, 14 Jan 2019 11:14:10 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Brian_Earl_Spilner wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@Brian_Earl_Spilner wrote:
I believe, it's attached to a lender and/or location. So, if you got an Affirm loan using a virtual card to buy something from Best Buy, it would be a CFA, while getting an Affirm loan with Motorola, who they are a captive lender for, would not. Thats my hypothesis as not every Affirm loan flags as a CFA.
Everyone who says they don’t have CFA reason codes with their Affirm loans has lower scores from what I’ve seen so it’s also quite likely that the CFA isn’t impactful enough versus the other key factors to be in the list. We will have to see what happens as people who don’t currently see it get up in the 700s.
My score wasn't impacted when my Affirm loan reported. It also doesn't carry a CFA tag in any way.
But there are certain thresholds where your credit doesn’t get damaged from certain changes because it’s already damaged from others. For example in my case, I didn’t take any score losses for new accounts since my initial losses when I added 3 in March. I also recovered all of the lost points by September and didn’t take any loss on any of the three bureaus when I added NFCU in September, the CLOC in December, the Sync Amazon reported on January 2nd, I didn’t even take any more points for inquiries. Now that my FICO is at 706 on TU, I bet that I will lose 10-20 points when my BBVA, NFCU Plat, and PayPal cards report.

CFA seems like a relatively minor black eye compared to other ones and the reason why it’s impacting Pika so much is likely because of how many she has being added to her reports and also they’re likely being scored incorrectly since they’re being retroactively added to boot.

Its all a guessing game, nobody knows until their key factors clear up as their score goes up, but logic would seem to dictate that if one loan is tagged CFA from a lender, all loans have to be, since CRAs are regulated. If they are treating CFAs in a non-uniform manner from profile to profile, they open themselves up to potential lawsuits since as we have seen with Pika and Revelate, these loans can be very costly to otherwise great scores.

No, your report always gets damaged. It may balance out from something else, but you will always be dinged in some way. You lose points for AAoA dropping, but the new limit reduces your utilization enough that your score goes up. You stop losing 3-5 points for inquiries once you get to around 11, but your score won't fully rebound until that last inquiry becomes unscorable. My report had no changes other than a drop in AAoA which was negated by that AAoA being almost 8 years. . Also, you're assuming all loans from a lender have to be CFA if one is. HSBC offered loans that were CFA, they also offered loans that weren't. In HSBC's case, the store the loan was originating from as well as which branch of HSBC was doing the financing, dictated whether a loan would more than likely be a CFA.

Re: Ahhh, the ever elusive CFA comment

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Jan 2019 11:35:09 GMT

I was hoping CFA meant Chick-Fil-A. I would get their Visa card!

Re: Ahhh, the ever elusive CFA comment

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Jan 2019 12:14:24 GMT

@Brian_Earl_Spilner wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@Brian_Earl_Spilner wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@Brian_Earl_Spilner wrote:
I believe, it's attached to a lender and/or location. So, if you got an Affirm loan using a virtual card to buy something from Best Buy, it would be a CFA, while getting an Affirm loan with Motorola, who they are a captive lender for, would not. Thats my hypothesis as not every Affirm loan flags as a CFA.
Everyone who says they don’t have CFA reason codes with their Affirm loans has lower scores from what I’ve seen so it’s also quite likely that the CFA isn’t impactful enough versus the other key factors to be in the list. We will have to see what happens as people who don’t currently see it get up in the 700s.
My score wasn't impacted when my Affirm loan reported. It also doesn't carry a CFA tag in any way.
But there are certain thresholds where your credit doesn’t get damaged from certain changes because it’s already damaged from others. For example in my case, I didn’t take any score losses for new accounts since my initial losses when I added 3 in March. I also recovered all of the lost points by September and didn’t take any loss on any of the three bureaus when I added NFCU in September, the CLOC in December, the Sync Amazon reported on January 2nd, I didn’t even take any more points for inquiries. Now that my FICO is at 706 on TU, I bet that I will lose 10-20 points when my BBVA, NFCU Plat, and PayPal cards report.

CFA seems like a relatively minor black eye compared to other ones and the reason why it’s impacting Pika so much is likely because of how many she has being added to her reports and also they’re likely being scored incorrectly since they’re being retroactively added to boot.

Its all a guessing game, nobody knows until their key factors clear up as their score goes up, but logic would seem to dictate that if one loan is tagged CFA from a lender, all loans have to be, since CRAs are regulated. If they are treating CFAs in a non-uniform manner from profile to profile, they open themselves up to potential lawsuits since as we have seen with Pika and Revelate, these loans can be very costly to otherwise great scores.
No, your report always gets damaged. It may balance out from something else, but you will always be dinged in some way. You lose points for AAoA dropping, but the new limit reduces your utilization enough that your score goes up. You stop losing 3-5 points for inquiries once you get to around 11, but your score won't fully rebound until that last inquiry becomes unscorable. My report had no changes other than a drop in AAoA which was negated by that AAoA being almost 8 years. . Also, you're assuming all loans from a lender have to be CFA if one is. HSBC offered loans that were CFA, they also offered loans that weren't. In HSBC's case, the store the loan was originating from as well as which branch of HSBC was doing the financing, dictated whether a loan would more than likely be a CFA.

No I quite literally didn’t have any drop because my AAoA was under 5 years but over 3 the whole time. Trust me, I watch my scores like a hawk, I even GAINED a point on Experian when BBVA pulled my report for my ClearPoints card. I have 30/60/90/120 lates, a repo, charge off, and BK on both EX and EQ, they hardly move and my utilization is ALWAYS under 8.9%. Once you get to a certain level of damage, you stop incurring further damage from similar moves.

I added cashRewards in September, CLOC in December, and now the Amazon Store Card and also had an Amex and BBVA inquiry in December and Experian is still at 671 as of this morning. My EQ 09 changes a few points here and there but my EQ 08 has stayed at 685 for awhile now too. TU was stuck at 651 then went to 652 last month and now 706. I also didn’t lose any points for the Sync inquiry yesterday on TU and none of my reports have 11 (I have 5 on TU, 6 on EQ, 4 on EX).

HSBC offers products besides CFA loans. Affirm doesn’t. Affirm is literally exclusively in the consumer finance business. Again, we will just have to wait and see what happens as scores go up for those who don’t currently have that reason code to see if it pops up later. If all Affirm loans aren’t given the same treatment then anyone who has gotten one and had their credit damaged has a case to sue.