I know there have been a good amount of threads on this, but I just saw another one on my Cap One Credit Wise summary... basically where fluff front-end CMS software paints an incorrect picture. As the image displayed shows, CW states that it's "excellent" that I'm not using any of my available credit. I have all $0 reported balances currently, so I'm of course taking a 15 point or so ding to my FICO scores. CW gives the thumbs up for this, though and as you can see from their description they're actually 100% wrong. It's a very minor thing here of course, but this is just another general shout out that CMS front-end software can be very misleading, especially for those that aren't die hards with this stuff like many on this forum are.
Well, two thoughts.
1) Vantage score does not penalize for no revolving activity.
2) Why do you care about being "Excellent" on self-admitted fluff CMS's? 
@Revelate wrote:Well, two thoughts.
1) Vantage score does not penalize for no revolving activity.
2) Why do you care about being "Excellent" on self-admitted fluff CMS's?
I was thinking the same thing 
@Revelate wrote:2) Why do you care about being "Excellent" on self-admitted fluff CMS's?
I don't, but many do.
If there is no penalty for 0 and a decreasing penalty for elements less than 100% that is perfectly accurate.
It’s really the same thing in FICO, less (but not zero) is better but paying from 62% to 54% or whatever (pick two aggregate or individual metrics that are between the same set of breakpoints) doesn’t necessarily result in a FICO increase.
We just do a better job of explaining that is all.
It’s really the same thing in FICO, less (but not zero) is better but paying from 62% to 54% or whatever (pick two aggregate or individual metrics that are between the same set of breakpoints) doesn’t necessarily result in a FICO increase.
We just do a better job of explaining that is all.
To add some other observations:
1) The Fico metric associated with accounts with balances considers fewer is better all the way down to zero
2) It is a different attribute all together that penalizes for no revolving account activity - and this penalty can be realized with multiple accounts having balances.
3) As alluded to above, The Fico utilization metric looks at lower is neutral or better all the way down to 0%. Again, the penalty comes from an independent attribute.
While there is no VantageScore penalty for no revolving activity based on my experience and review of reason codes, their utilization metric has a local maximum score anomoly. I've experienced it a couple times in real life and by focused OFAT testing of the simulator. See below. I did some follow-up simulator testing a year later changing total CC balances to generate 0.1% UT increments in the 3.5% to 5.5% range. As I recall, the local maximum plateaued in the 4.2% to 4.7%. The follow-up testing showed an 835 peak for my profile - perhaps a different # of cards with balances, a lower mortgage balance or aging made a trivial difference in peak potential.
Note: Number of accounts with a balance is constant in the below simulation as are all other factors except total CC balance.
