Just saw my July 3rd EQ FICO 9 on NFCU site and saw that score had dropped 17 points from a month ago, which is odd because EQ FICO 8 is up about that many points. Contributing to the oddity is that both revolving utilization and installment utilization have improved over the month, and there have been no inquiries or new accounts, or anything else which would normally cause a FICO score to go down.
Spitballing: Does anyone out there have a breakdown of the FICO 9 scorecards? Is it possible that there are 2 thick clean FICO 9 scorecards which are distinguished by utilization levels? I doubt it, but I'm struggling to come up with a rational explanation.
Holy cow. I guess that is the answer. Apparently FICO 9 added a scorecard for folks with high utilization, which I was on until this month. So that my improvement in utilization caused a scorecard change:
"With the addition of a scorecard for consumers with a high
amount of revolving debt, FICO® Score 9 can do an even better job in predicting bankruptcy as well as
other forms of delinquency"
Link to PDF:
Yeah, prior to FICO 9 to my knowledge utilization was an intra-scorecard modifier, not a segmentation metric.
It does make sense, any idea what your specific revolving debt balances were at the time of the pulls and individual / aggregate utilization levels as well? I don't get much access to my FICO 9 scores but they're pretty much in line with FICO 8 as a general rule other than TU where I believe it's non-trivially higher though I only get that once a year and I rather doubt I fall into the high utilization scorecard(s).
Your theory of a high utilization scorecard MUST be true. 2 years ago when I had low util, my FICO9 always trailed my FICO8 scores by 40 points in May of this year, I had 80% utilization (100k limits) due to a relocation, business expenses, and dopamine-inducing quarantine purchases made from my living room, deck, and bed.
Decided to buy a car on May 15th because why not, and my FICO9 was now 50 points higher than FICO8. So I went with Penfed. Now this month with balances back down, boom... flips right back. Although a bit closer now. Boggles the mind dude.
@Revelate wrote:Yeah, prior to FICO 9 to my knowledge utilization was an intra-scorecard modifier, not a segmentation metric.
It does make sense, any idea what your specific revolving debt balances were at the time of the pulls and individual / aggregate utilization levels as well? I don't get much access to my FICO 9 scores but they're pretty much in line with FICO 8 as a general rule other than TU where I believe it's non-trivially higher though I only get that once a year and I rather doubt I fall into the high utilization scorecard(s).
It looks like the trigger was moving from around 21% aggregate revolving utilization to around 19%..... so I guess that gives us a pretty good idea as to where the line of demarcation lies 
The move came primarily from moving one account down from 82% to 26%; so if it's based on individual utilization, that would no doubt be the culprit.
@Anonymous wrote:
I believe you just began our knowledge base SJ. It appears it can be possible from individual utilization.
I agree because 20% aggregate seems too ordinary.
