Authorized user = point increase?

[Anonymous]

I am getting conflicting information as to whether being added as an authorized user on someone's account will increase my credit score. Does anyone know the latest on this? Has anyone seen a point increase lately by doing this?

[Anonymous]

yes, I just added my husband to mine and it gave him a boost

[Anonymous]

It can certainly help your AAoA if the account you are added to as an AU is older than any of your accounts. I'm not positive, but you may also see a change in your utilization percentages (at least I believe hubby adding me to his new Discover card as an AU bumped my score up as it caused my overall util. to drop)

[nothingman02]

An AU account WILL help UTL and Payment history as well along with the AAoA.

[cobaltnv]

Being added as a AU will help if the account is clean (no lates), has a low utilization, and has an age older than your AAoA. 

The conflicting information likely came from early reports that Fico08 was not going to count AU any longer. This has been modified and Fico08 will apparently count AUs only if some connection exists between the individuals (spouse, family member etc).  Of course we are still likely years away from Fico08 being used by the majority of lenders.

[llecs]

OP, about 2 years ago, FICO announced that they were going to remove all AUs from scoring in the new FICO08 model. This was proposed because lenders were taking big hits on defaults and many of those involved were engaged in piggybacking. At the request of the lenders, FICO was going to remove all AUs from scoring to minimize risk and make their customers happy. However, there's an obscure law out there (*scrounges around to look for it*) that gives a vague reference that FICO cannot exclude AUs from scoring. Without a clear defined way to distinguish a family member from a stranger, FICO backed off of the AU issue over a year ago. From time to time, someone will read an old article from somewhere saying that AUs aren't included in scoring and repeat what they read over in myFICO forums. To befuddle things, some even are very adamant in posting here that AUs are not included in FICO, despite being told on the contrary.

Now other scores, like the VantageScore, do not include AUs into scoring. But those are FAKOs anyway.

[Anonymous]

some credit card company doesn't report AU on CR. Just recently I was added to my mom's discover card and I asked them if it will show up on my credit report and they said no it will not since you are a AU on the card.

[nothingman02]

Nope! Although you are right in that some companies do not report AU, Discover is not one of them. They DO report AU a/cs. I personally never take those CSRs' opinions at face value. I'd do my own research and get multiple opinions. If you call back 4 or 5 different times, I'd bet that you'd receive conflicting information.

One thing Ive experienced in getting an AU to report is that the addresses HAVE TO match. This happened to be the case with all 3 CRAs.

[haulingthescoreup]

Find out from the CCC whether they report AU cards.

After that, here's what you want in an account to AU on:

- older than your AAoA (average age of accounts)
- consistently low or 0% utilization
- squeaky clean, no negatives at all. OK, maybe a 30-day 6 1/2 years ago if you already have a zillion negatives, but otherwise, no
- a decent CL that will help your util if your other cards report balances

IMO, AU's shouldn't use the card. I appreciate DH letting me AU on his Discover, so that I could get the length of history, but it's his card, and I wouldn't dream of using it. A shame, because it's so pretty. But still.

Also IMO, if the real owner of the card decides to go on a toot and run it up to 99% util, that's their right. It's their card, after all. So find out how complicated it is to remove yourself should this happen.

[Anonymous]

Amex reports AU accounts. I asked them before we relocated and transfered our Amex to the U.S.in March 2009.

Their answer was:

However, the Additional Cardmember enjoys the benefits of sharing positive credit reporting, which can be removed anytime upon your request.

 I'm an authorized user at the account of my spouse and we have it for about 14 years and I guess based on this reason my first credit score in the U.S. was 771 with Equifax