As far as utilization goes, Amex charge cards are ignored in revolving utilization metrics in modern credit scoring. Older models such as EX98 would use the highest ever reported balance as the credit limit, so if you charged $2000 a month for example every month without ever going higher you would always be penalized for having an account at 100% utilization.
Any internal limits, whether a NPSL ceiling, Pay Over Time limit, or a hard limit imposed as a penalty by Amex are not reported to the credit bureaus.
@4sallypat wrote:I had a very difficult time with Amex after 29 years of smooth sailing - when I got my first house, upon escrow opening, my mortgage broker said I was at 100% utilization on the Amex due to a recent family trip to Hawaii. Paid off balance as normal - got a letter generated by Amex - sent letter to mortgage broker and got a rapid rescore in order to continue escro.
According to the mortgage broker, Amex NPSL balances after the statement cuts has a nasty effect on only mortgage scores (5,4,2) - affected by highest spend recorded against you as high utilization if you use it alot.
Other scores (Auto, Bankcard, general, etc) are not affected by the Amex NPSL reporting to CRAs.
5/4/2 scores should not count NPSL cards in that manner as while they are older now, they were after corrections were made for NPSL cards (including some Visa products at the time that reported no limit). I did run into an issue with my first mortgage due to the way their automated systems counted Amex charge cards toward DTI, however. I had VERY large POT balances at the time and it looked like my monthly debt obligations were around $50k/month ($600k annually) on those cards alone. 😂 Loan officer was able to overlook those.
...... I did run into an issue with my first mortgage due to the way their automated systems counted Amex charge cards toward DTI, however. I had VERY large POT balances at the time and it looked like my monthly debt obligations were around $50k/month ($600k annually) on those cards alone. 😂 Loan officer was able to overlook those.
You had a VERY understanding loan officer!
Mine was adamantly incensed and demanded I remove my wife as AU on the Amex card as that was causing a large score drop.
That's how sensitive some LO are!
Amex's credit reporting dept even said that they do not report utilization but some older score models take the highest amount as 100%.
That was my case (spending $7000 on the Hawaii trip without a large spend due to Covid) and causing the credit report to say I was 100% utilization and tanked my score by their archaic scoring model.
Luckily, Amex was able to report that the full payment after the statement cut via a letter to the LO. LO then did a rapid rescore and got the loan to go thru. Never missed the deadline - got funded in 26 days!
@Anonymous wrote:Approved for a No Preset Limit .. Flex Spend ... Amex Platinum ... how will this report to credit bureaus as far as Credit Limit / Utilization... check the spending tool and it's allowing up 7K .... anybody have experience with this card specifically and how it reports ?
It's ignored for utilization purposes in most scoring models. In some of the antique scoring models, most notably the mortgage scores, they can come up and bite you, by factoring in your statement balance and treating your historical "high balance" as though it were a credit limit. So if one is applying for a mortgage, or for anything else that uses those scoring models, one should be sure to have a statement balance way below one's historical high balance.
