Credit mix - what am I missing?

[Anonymous]

So since I was at 100%, no harm no foul? So a closed loan is no better than an open non-optimized loan then? Have we established that?

[Anonymous]

Just to clarify, Birdman.....

(a) You went from having exactly one open installment account to having that account closed. (Thus no open loans at all.)

(b) Prior to closure, the balance was at least 98% of the original loan amount.

(c)  You had pulled your FICO 8 score immediately before closure and immediately after and there was no change in score.

Is that all correct?

If so, regarding (c) what tool where you using to pull your scores and reports?  Was the score only on one bureau?  (E.g. Experian say?)  Are you certain that the report itself showed the loan as closed when you did the second credit score pull?

If your answers are all yes, none of this would be surprising to me, though it's always useful to have the received wisdom of anything tested.  The belief by the experts here is that any installment account (closed or open) meets the credit mix requirement.  The installment utilization piece belongs to the Amounts Owed section of the FICO pie chart.  At an extremely high value, you got zero bonus points.  As the IU goes from 100% to 8.9% you begin to get more bonus points, though almost certainly not in a smooth gradual fashion, but rather by crossing specific breakpoints (Revelate mentions 70% as a strong possibility).  When you have finally gotten the full bonus, that appears to be 25-40 points, depending on the person's specific profile (and possibly which scorecard he is in).

[Anonymous]

Hi CGID,

Yes, I went from having exactly one open installment loan to having it become one of several closed loans (no open loans).

Yes the balance was above 98% principal.

No I did not pull my score before and after and was not even following credit like I am now, however I was a EX CW customer and opening my app almost daily. Consequently when BBS brought up this question I went back to my archived credit reports. I found the last date did report with the loan open and the following day where it was closed. I then did a comparison. As a matter of fact, it may be two days apart. I’ll double check and get back to you, I don’t have my tracking notebook with me. Either way, no changes between the credit reports except for the loan being closed and the date, obviously. No thresholds or first of the months passed.

[CAS2019]

Re  OP questions, I know this is a long shot, but could it be that your credit card mix lacks a VISA?  I have the same issue, except I don’t have a Discover card; I have an open mortgage, a closed (paid off in good standing) car loan, two store cards and six bank cards (VISA, AmEx and Cap1), and my credit mix is stating “Very Good” as well.    

[SouthJamaica]

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@CAS2019 wrote:

Re  OP questions, I know this is a long shot, but could it be that your credit card mix lacks a VISA?  I have the same issue, except I don’t have a Discover card; I have an open mortgage, a closed (paid off in good standing) car loan, two store cards and six bank cards (VISA, AmEx and Cap1), and my credit mix is stating “Very Good” as well.    

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I've had "excellent" in credit mix for a long while. One thing I have, that many people do not have, is a personal line of credit, which is a form of revolving credit that is not a credit card.

I wonder if that could possibly be the missing link. If so, it would seem like kind of an oddball thing for FICO to be looking for.

Are there any folks out there who have (a) open or closed installment loan, and (b) credit cards, and (c) personal line of credit, who do not have "excellent" in credit mix?

Conversely, are there any folks out there who have only credit cards and installment loans, but do not have a PLOC, who do have "excellent" in credit mix?

[Anonymous]

Could just be a crazy glitch like when I had one percent utilization and it still said very good instead of exceptional even though I only had two accounts reporting out of God who knows how many. But in reality my guess is you do not have enough revolvers and they’re looking for a certain minimum number because thick profiles have lesser penalties and are therefore more “exceptional”, LOL. I bet if you add a few trade lines it’ll become exceptional, how many did you say you had open and closed OP?

[Thomas_Thumb]

My mix has always been Very Good - never Exceptional. I think my profile lacks critical mass to be exceptional.

SJ, on the other hand, certainly exceeds the minimum account QTY for critical mass.

There really are 3 categories of accounts:

1) installment accounts

2) revolving accounts

3) open accounts

Open accounts have one month, PIF terms. Typical open accounts are charge cards, utility services, phone/cable/satellite services and rent. Depending on the credit scoring algorithm, open accounts are evaluated differently - or not at all depending on type.

[SouthJamaica]

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@Thomas_Thumb wrote:

My mix has always been Very Good - never Exceptional. I think my profile lacks critical mass to be exceptional.

SJ, on the other hand, certainly exceeds the minimum account QTY for critical mass.

There really are 3 categories of accounts:

1) installment accounts

2) revolving accounts

3) open accounts

Open accounts have one month, PIF terms. Typical open accounts are charge cards, utility services, phone/cable/satellite services and rent. Depending on the credit scoring algorithm, open accounts are evaluated differently - or not at all depending on type.

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I haven't had anything reporting that you would describe as an open account, until just a few months ago when I added a personal charge card, but my "credit mix" has been termed "exceptional" for around 3 years now.

[Revelate]

CMS credit-mix and the algorithms are totally different: focusing on CMS's seems, well, suboptimal?

[Anonymous]

CMS front-end "ratings" like exceptional, good, poor, etc. along with their dark green, light green, yellow, red etc. colors are just fluff and in many ways should just be ignored, as many times they serve to confuse/mislead people more than help them.