13 point score drop - another bucket?

[newhis]

My DW EX FICO score were 732 11/11/2015, it grew to 792 11/11/2016, then 797 11/26/2016 and then down to 784 12/11/2016.

She has EX free monthly report from 11/08/2016 and 12/08/2016. The changes between the 2 are (in bold what changed after 11/26):

- 5 HP reported in November, 4 older than 1 year, 1 at 11 months. 4 HP reported in December, 4 older than 1 year. (1 drop)

- her newest account was 11 months in Nov., 1 year old in Dec.

- 5% credit debit, now 3%

- total credit limit 95k last month, now 117k (several CLIs)

- her BT card went from 39% to 23% thanks to CLI

- her auto loan changed a little, just one more payment, 76.2% last month, now 74.6%

- AoOA now 2 years 10 months

- AAoA now 2 years 2 months

Everything looks positive. I was expecting a few points up because her newest account and HP both are more than 1 year old now.

I guess they put her in another 'bucket' and that's why her score is down.

Let's see what happens in a couple of months when her oldest card is 3 years old.

[Anonymous]

It's easy to get lost in the details in these situations.  The way to look at the hypothesis of scorecard reassignment (re-bucketing) is that there are only four things that matter:

Is her profile clean?

     If yes,

          then she's been placed in one of the 8 clean scorecards.

     If no,

          then she's been placed in one of the 4 dirty scorecards.

Assuming she's clean, then three more things matter (and only these):

    * Age of oldest account

    * Age of youngest account

    * Total number of accounts (few accounts mean a "thin" profile)

Information about her auto accounts, her CC utilization, her AAoA, her CLIs, her total credit limit, etc. -- none of this affects her being reassigned to another scorecard. 

In this case study, my guess is that her profile is clean.  She hasn't crossed any interesting breakpoints with age of oldest account and she appears to have a thick profile.  But her age of youngest account did go from 11 months to 12.  That could matter a lot.  So yes, for that reason she very well might have been assigned to a scorecard.

Then simply mention at the end (as you do) that all her other factors would have led you to believe a small increase, but instead there was a decrease.  Placing all the details all mixed up together in one long list, however, makes it hard to figure out what is going on.

Thanks for the post.  It does seem to suggest that Age of Youngest crossing to 1 year is a trigger for scorecard reassignment -- assuming that there is nothing else you are missing (a conventional explanation for the score loss).

[SouthJamaica]

---

@newhis wrote:

My DW EX FICO score were 732 11/11/2015, it grew to 792 11/11/2016, then 797 11/26/2016 and then down to 784 12/11/2016.

She has EX free monthly report from 11/08/2016 and 12/08/2016. The changes between the 2 are (in bold what changed after 11/26):

- 5 HP reported in November, 4 older than 1 year, 1 at 11 months. 4 HP reported in December, 4 older than 1 year. (1 drop)

- her newest account was 11 months in Nov., 1 year old in Dec.

- 5% credit debit, now 3%

- total credit limit 95k last month, now 117k (several CLIs)

- her BT card went from 39% to 23% thanks to CLI

- her auto loan changed a little, just one more payment, 76.2% last month, now 74.6%

- AoOA now 2 years 10 months

- AAoA now 2 years 2 months

Everything looks positive. I was expecting a few points up because her newest account and HP both are more than 1 year old now.

I guess they put her in another 'bucket' and that's why her score is down.

Let's see what happens in a couple of months when her oldest card is 3 years old.

---

With so many things going on I think it would be total guesswork to try to figure out what caused a slight score change like that.

[newhis]

@CreditGuyInDixie

Yes, clean file.

* Age of oldest account: it changed from 2 years 9 months to 2 years 10 months

* Age of youngest account: it changed from 11 months to 12 months

* Total number of accounts: 12 open, 2 closed

@SouthJamaica

Sorry about that. I just wanted to be clear that all changes were positive. I can't find anything negative to explain a 13 point drop.

Maybe there is something new on her reports after 12/08? Nothing new on her TU and EQ reports from CK.

[JLK93]

It could be the youngest account. When my youngest account aged to 1 year, I lost 15 points on my FICO 9 industry enhanced scores.

Whey did here AAoA decrease. Where there new accounts?

[SouthJamaica]

---

@newhis wrote:

@Anonymous

Yes, clean file.

* Age of oldest account: it changed from 2 years 9 months to 2 years 10 months

* Age of youngest account: it changed from 11 months to 12 months

* Total number of accounts: 12 open, 2 closed

@SouthJamaica

Sorry about that. I just wanted to be clear that all changes were positive. I can't find anything negative to explain a 13 point drop.

Maybe there is something new on her reports after 12/08? Nothing new on her TU and EQ reports from CK.

---

It's meaningless to try to analyze a 12/11 EX score without the 12/11 EX report. Yes of course there could be something new between 12/8 & 12/11. Also even if there's nothing new in the real world, there could be something new on the report which might not jibe with reality.

CK updates the reports only once a week, and won't give you EX at all. So I can't fathom why you're even looking at that if you want to understand a change in the EX score.

You're trying to figure something out without having any of the data you need to figure it out.

As an example of just how meaningless this exercise is, in my case, the other day, 2 new personal lines of credit reported on my TU & EQ reports but did not report on my EX report, and the payoff of an auto loan reported on TU & EX, but not on EQ.

If you want to know her EX score and her EX report in real time, the only way I know of to do it is to subscribe to Experian.com, which really gives you that info, totally updated, whenever you pull it. Then when the score changes you'll probably have a decent idea as to why.

[newhis]

@SouthJamaica, yes you are right. Sorry I wasted your time.

It shouldn't be anything else between 12/8 and 12/11, but you never know unless you have the report with you. I hope is just a different clean scorecard.

[newhis]

---

@JLK93 wrote:

It could be the youngest account. When my youngest account aged to 1 year, I lost 15 points on my FICO 9 industry enhanced scores.

Whey did here AAoA decrease. Where there new accounts?

---

Nothing new in the last 12 months. Her AAoA increased from 2 years 1 month to 2 years 2 months. Sorry it wasn't clear.

[SouthJamaica]

---

@newhis wrote:

@SouthJamaica, yes you are right. Sorry I wasted your time.

It shouldn't be anything else between 12/8 and 12/11, but you never know unless you have the report with you. I hope is just a different clean scorecard.

---

You didn't waste my time It's never a waste of time to hang out with you guys

[Revelate]

---

@newhis wrote:

@Anonymous

Yes, clean file.

* Age of oldest account: it changed from 2 years 9 months to 2 years 10 months

* Age of youngest account: it changed from 11 months to 12 months

* Total number of accounts: 12 open, 2 closed

@SouthJamaica

Sorry about that. I just wanted to be clear that all changes were positive. I can't find anything negative to explain a 13 point drop.

Maybe there is something new on her reports after 12/08? Nothing new on her TU and EQ reports from CK.

---

JLK did post some pretty compelling evidence there is a boundary on clean files (even if I explicitly did not have one on my dirty scorecard) where age of youngest account does have breakpoints for scorecard assignment.

Just picking out of the wind that's what I'd put my money on more than some small balance twiddling.  Did the number of revolvers with balances shift at all?

I'm not a big fan of the bucketing argument as usually it's proven false but I'm just tossing out conjectures.