Breakdown of Score Ingredients

[VanderSnoot]

I joined MF a few weeks ago and am curious about the factors considered in scoring. I'm not trying to recreate the algorithms - that's beyond my abilities - but want to outline the score components to the best of MF's knowledge. I did this off the top of my head and without a CR handy, so I know there's substantial revision ahead. Please add to what's below.

Score Ingredients

1. Payment History -- 35% -- 297.5 Points
   
   1. 7 yr history
   2. % on time
   3. PIF
   4. Delinquencies and length of delinquencies (30/60/90/120)
   5. C/O and collections
2. Amount of Debt -- 20% -- 255 Points
   1. Utilization (under 8.9% to max)
   2. DTI
   3. CCT/Experian notes a two year trend - could be a factor here or under Payment History?
3. Length of Credit History -- 127.5 Points
   1. AAoA
   2. AoOA
   3. AoYA? Here or under New Credit below (3 and 6 month points, 12 month rebucketing?)
4. Amount of New Credit -- 10% -- 85 Points
   1. AoYA?
   2. Inquiries and credit seeking within 1 year (2 yr reported)
5. Credit Mix -- 10% -- 85 Points
   1. Can max with 3 revolvers and 1 installment

[800FICOGoal]

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@VanderSnoot wrote:

1. Amount of Debt -- 20% -- 255 Points

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Shouldn't that be 30%

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@VanderSnoot wrote:

1. Amount of Debt -- 20% -- 255 Points
   1. ....
   2. DTI

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As far as FICO scoring, how is DTI a component of one's score? Wouldn't that be a measurement calculated by the lender themselves? The CRA's don't have access to your income since its only a part of the credit application. 

[NRB525]

OP the problem with this approach ( 850 divided into these general percentages ) is it is too literal.

The FICO algorithm is more of a fuzzy logic, from our ability to determine what it does.

For example, someone who is new to credit, 6 months payment history, no lates but implied 1 new account less than a year, AAoA less than a year, nevertheless should be right around 700. By the logic you have started above, how is that adding up? Does a new account start at 400? 450? Not hardly.

[Revelate]

To expand on NRB's post, everyone isn't thrown into the same pot (scorecard) and then assigned a linear score from 300 to 850 (when talking FICO 8 classic anyway).

Scorecards have ranges, might even be an explicit max and minimum although we don't know what those boundaries are TBH, but it's awfully hard for someone with a tax lien or a BK to get above 760 for example, and as another example a 1 year old clean file maxxes out about 760 and a 2 year old clean file maxxes out at about 800... not 850.

I'm not entirely sure why they put the rough weightings in there TBH or even how they came up with the specific percentages, longer term payment history is literally 99% of the ballgame anyway.

[VanderSnoot]

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@Revelate wrote:

To expand on NRB's post, everyone isn't thrown into the same pot (scorecard) and then assigned a linear score from 300 to 850 (when talking FICO 8 classic anyway).

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Do we know what the buckets are?

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@Revelate wrote:

I'm not entirely sure why they put the rough weightings in there TBH or even how they came up with the specific percentages, longer term payment history is literally 99% of the ballgame anyway.

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Really ...? Wow, I didn't realize that.

Thanks everyone. I'll stop trying to figure it out 

[Anonymous]

A few things that you're a bit off on, OP, that you should consider.  A few of the bullet points you have listed like % in the first category, DTI in the second, etc. are not factors that impact FICO scores.  Next, if you're talking FICO scores that span from 300-850, that's 550 points total.  You were looking at 35% of 850, not 35% of 550 for example when you were giving those point values per category.  It's also not as cut and dry as that, which Rev sort of touched on above already.

[Anonymous]

OP I don’t think you get any points for PIF, unless it’s because you’re bringing down the number of accounts for the balance. Furthermore how many revolvers it takes depends on the algorithm you’re trying to optimize