FICO '08

[Anonymous]

Still a little fuzzy on FICO '08 rollout.  Is the FICO '08 product pretty much rolled out across the board by now?  There were supposed to be 2 mail areas addressed: eliminating scoring for authorized user accounts and that collections under $100 were not supposed to be scored.  I had thought they scrapped the idea of eliminating auth user scoring, but am not sure.  Can anyone shed some light of the current status and changes that actually went in FICO '08 and the rollout status?

Thanks!

[haulingthescoreup]

Authorized user cards will continue to be scored. (Although lenders can choose to ignore them, of course.)

I * think * the collections part stands.

As to the roll-out, it is available for adoption, but lenders are notoriously slow to change scoring systems. So it's there, but it's lonely.

[AndySoCal]

Authorized user accounts will still included the in the score but the impact of the account will be less if any impact at all. A collection account under $100 feature is in the FICO 08 but mutiple collection accounts will have a greater impact on the score.

[haulingthescoreup]

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@AndySoCal wrote:

Authorized user accounts will still included the in the score but the impact of the account will be less if any impact at all. A collection account under $100 feature is in the FICO 08 but mutiple collection accounts will have a greater impact on the score.

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Maybe.

Per the very careful announcement by FICO, AU accounts will be scored, but there will be an effort to determine that there is some legitimate relationship between the account holder and the AU (matching names, addresses, some bit of shared history), and maybe the accounts will carry a little less weight. I wouldn't be surprised if it worked out to something like, the first one gets counted, and after that, maybe not.  At any rate, they are supposed to show up on credit reports if the lender chooses. It's not for the credit bureau (heads up, Equifax!!) to refuse to list them.

I think that the message to take from this is that an AU account won't hurt (if properly chosen), and it will probably help, but don't expect your credit profile and FICO scores to be driven by AU accounts.

And IMO, they shouldn't be. AU accounts are great for those who are getting started, but like any other crutch, they're not meant to be used forever. (At least not solely for scoring purposes. They can make perfect sense for families optimizing their financial activities.)

And I have an old AU account, a Discover card belonging to DXH. I got on it back when we were married for its age, because I didn't have credit in my own name for most of our marriage. I took myself off the account after the divorce, but it's still reporting, and so my feeling is, well, as long as it's there, I'm grateful, and when it falls off, then that's OK too.