How long before Auth Users develop a credit file

[Anonymous]

My sons have no credit so I added them as Authorized Users on six of my credit cards.  Two of the cards are major credit cards with limits over $1000.  The lowest limit card is $600.  How long before they have a credit file, and then how long will it take for their scores to start coming up?  If I'm unable to pay the cards off monthly, I pay double payments and then pay them off every 3 months.

[takeshi74]

6 months minimum but just being an AU may not do that.  They need to establish their own tradelines.  Not all creditors or scoring models will consider accounts where one is an AU.

[MarineVietVet]

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@Anonymous wrote:

My sons have no credit so I added them as Authorized Users on six of my credit cards.  Two of the cards are major credit cards with limits over $1000.  The lowest limit card is $600.  How long before they have a credit file, and then how long will it take for their scores to start coming up?  If I'm unable to pay the cards off monthly, I pay double payments and then pay them off every 3 months.

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Yes it can help them IF the account is older than any of theirs (doesn't sound like that is a problem), IF the payment history is long and clean, IF the utilization is very low, and IF it will report to the CRA's. Not all cards will do this. You need to ask the company first. They will inherit the entire history of these accounts. One caveat however; if any account starts to go south their credit will be affected as well. Keep that in mind.

They will have a credit history as soon as the accounts they are on report to the CRA's. That could mean just days depending on when in the month you add them. That is another advantage of being an AU. You don't have to wait months for a credit profile to be generated.

[Anonymous]

I forget when I was added as an AU and when it first started reporting, but I inherited 12k line and all the history that goes with it as AU on a Discover More card.

Discover lets you add an AU without SSN and it still reports to CRA.

[Goblin]

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@MarineVietVet wrote:

Yes it can help them IF the account is older than any of theirs (doesn't sound like that is a problem), IF the payment history is long and clean, IF the utilization is very low, and IF it will report to the CRA's. Not all cards will do this. You need to ask the company first. They will inherit the entire history of these accounts. One caveat however; if any account starts to go south their credit will be affected as well. Keep that in mind.

They will have a credit history as soon as the accounts they are on report to the CRA's. That could mean just days depending on when in the month you add them. That is another advantage of being an AU. You don't have to wait months for a credit profile to be generated.

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+++ Kudos

[RobertEG]

Additionally, when the AU does receive a score, that score may be of little impact on a prospective creditor if it is based only on the account history of another.

If the AU is applying for credit wherein the creditor relies only on a score and does not do a manual review, then being an AU can be a great building tool.

However, if the creditor does a manual review and sees that the score is based entirely on the credit history of another, they may choose to totally disregard it in their decision making.