15 point loss after completing Self Lender 1 year

[Anonymous]

This thread is probably more to vent than to understand, since there's nothing I can do to change the outcome except open another loan. I opened a Self Lender account a year ago, as part of my rebuild process. I'm still rebuilding, my scores are now better than what's in my siggy but I still have a few more months until one more baddy falls off and hopefully they see a nice positive bump.

My Experian was up to 679. Best it's been in a while. It actually bumped my rating with them from "fair" to "good" which is just words on a screen but still made me happy. 

Self reported the Loan as paid and my EX dropped 15 points with Experian listing "No Loan Activity" as a negative under What's Hurting My Score. You just can't bloody win, can you. You'd think having paid the loan off with all on time payments would be a good thing, and yes I know in the long run it still is, but taking a 15 point loss on closing it successfully is somewhat a kick in the teeth.

Meh.

[AllZero]

Unfortunately, that's part of the scoring algorithm.

If no other open installment loan, best practice is to have 5+ year SSL that is fully optimized. 1 year may be too short.

I would recommend reading the below from CreditGuyInDixie
Adding an installment loan -- the Share Secure technique
The Quest for an SSL alternative to Alliant

From SouthJamaica
NFCU SSL

From adrianaesque
Approved NFCU SSL - with detailed steps (May 2020)

Here are two institutions that have SSL which you can pay in advance to 8.9% utilization without shortening loan term:
NFCU - membership restrictions.
SSFCU - geofence.

[rostrow416]

If you have no other loans reporting, you will no longer gain the additional points for open loan (which in your case was the 15 points).  This is normal whether it's the only mortgage, auto, or personal loan closing out.  Open another, longer term loan and you should pick most of those points back up.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the information! I'm probably going to hold off on the SSL because we're planning to buy another car in 2022 and I'll just put that in my name. I don't really need a good score for anything other than wanting to have one again, so I can be patient about this. Hopefully the Self Lender account will still help in some small regard (good payment history) until it ages off in ten years.

[Mr_Mojo_Risin]

Just curious, did you ever regain the 70 points lost from original loan?

I had a kind of a similar situation, I had a new auto loan and new CC report in Sept 2020 and lost about 80 points. 

I've gained back around 22-23 points in the last 5 months. Wandering if we're able to get all or most points back?

[Anonymous]

I've gained it back and then some since then, but I couldn't tell you how much that had to do with the loan, or the two cards I opened afterwards, or my baddies aging off, etc. There's a lot of variables for the points I've gained over the past year, but at its simplest, yes, they definitely came back.

[Mr_Mojo_Risin]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I've gained it back and then some since then, but I couldn't tell you how much that had to do with the loan, or the two cards I opened afterwards, or my baddies aging off, etc. There's a lot of variables for the points I've gained over the past year, but at its simplest, yes, they definitely came back.

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Yeah it's hard to tell when multiple changes are occurring, I can certainly attest to that lol. 

I'm glad you were able to recover from the loss you took and wish you luck on your rebuild!