Does “reporting” a balance have any added value?

[Anonymous]

Just to be clear for anyone not fully famliar with Trended Data, the term refers to the ability of CRAs to capture a lot of historical data.  Before 2012/2013, the CRAs would "write over" the previous month's data for Balance and Credit Limit, so that there was no way for someone viewing your report to see what your reported Balance and Credit Limit might have been month-by-month for the last 24 months (say).  And there had never been an ability to see the amounts that the person paid (or the dates that he paid) -- even for the most recent month.  With TD all that gets solved -- assuming that the creditor submits it.

It looks from Heaven's reports that ALL of his accounts have some TD -- specifically the month-by-month history of reported balances.  Heaven is that correct?

If so, are there other pieces of TD that seem to be being universally collected, e.g. the history of the credit limit?

In other words, is it only the payment data (dates and amounts) that some creditors report and others do not?

The missing payment data is of course an issue of tremendous importance -- TD was hoped to be the holy grail that would enable people viewing the report to detect whether the consumer tended to be more of a Transactor (always paying his CC balances in full) or a Revolver (often paying less than the full amount and carrying a balance to the next month).

Without the payment data, however, the T-D distinction can't be made, and the TD as a whole becomes far less helpful.

[HeavenOhio]

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@Anonymous wrote:

It looks from Heaven's reports that ALL of his accounts have some TD -- specifically the month-by-month history of reported balances.  Heaven is that correct?

If so, are there other pieces of TD that seem to be being universally collected, e.g. the history of the credit limit?

In other words, is it only the payment data (dates and amounts) that some creditors report and others do not?

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For the most part, balance and limit historiess are reported. I see no limit history at all on Experian. And AMEX shows no balances or limits on Equifax. Otherwise, I think balances and limits are reported.

[Revelate]

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@SouthJamaica wrote:

I reject the notion that there is anything "natural" or "organic" about paying after receiving one's statement, rather than before.

A better term would be "historical".

In the old days, when we waited to receive a paper statement in the mail to know what our balance was, and then sent in a payment, that was natural enough.

But nowadays, where we have 24/7 online access to our accounts, I find it more natural and organic to pay part or all of my balance whenever I feel like it.

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I would suggest the vast majority of consumers haven't changed their payment behavior.

[Revelate]

Trended data really never caught on.

Actually some of the big 5 used to report it but now no longer do; that may swing back again in the future with FICO X or whatever but it's not prevalent today though if it's on the report almost certain internal UW algorithms look at it.

[KLEXH25]

UPDATE: I thought I'd share an alert I received today on my Experian App. I mentioned that I haven't let Capital One report in quite some time, even though I regularly put charges on it. I decided I would let it report in April this time, and I received the following alert. Apparently, the account appeared dormant by not letting it report. While I don't think this has any affect on scoring, I figured it was worth mentioning.

[Revelate]

That’s just CMS reporting around identity theft, not necessarily part of the algorithm and honestly I doubt that it is.

Never really been anyone who could verify that an tradeline gets discounted with 6+ months of no activity, but even a $0 report counts as a tradeline being updated in the last 6 months. Really Synchrony is the only possible lender I am aware of that this could be tested on.

We’ve seen that here with the Scorewatch monitoring (EQ) which has a configurable setting for this even.