FICO 8 EXP jumped 43 points!?

[Anonymous]

Went from 742 to 785 in one day with a balance decrease of $41!  Huh?  Someone help me out on this, not complaining though.  

[Anonymous]

What was the change in aggregate utilization?  Single TL utilization?

Any major changes to AAoA or AoOA?  Could be "rebucketing" by going to a scorecard covering an older/thicker file.

Any major inquiries age older than 12 months from an app spree a year ago?

Check to see if any derogatory information disappeared -- a 30D late from many years ago?

[Anonymous]

yeah, I'll have to look into all that, just caught me off guard.  Just wish my TU would increase a little more.

[Anonymous]

A balance decrease of $41 would never cause a score to increase 43 points.  No doubt you receved an alert that let you know about your updated reported balance, which provided you with a new score, but that score change has nothing to do with the balance change.

The only thing I can think of that would case a score change that big would be the removal of a negative item, that is something to the "payment history" slice of the FICO pie which makes up 35% of your score.  All of the other smaller slices of the pie that would include things like age of accounts, inquiries, etc. IMO wouldn't impact a score 43 points from any single event the way a negative item being removed could.

[Anonymous]

I envision if someone had an AAoA of 23 months and 13 inquiries 11 months old, they might see a significant jump in the next month but not that much.  Maybe the $41 payoff was on a $300 card at 90% utilization?

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I envision if someone had an AAoA of 11 months and 13 inquiries 11 months old, they might see a significant jump in the next month but not that much.  Maybe the $41 payoff was on a $300 card at 90% utilization?

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It's possible those age and inquiry factors could increase score, but the chances of those events happening that way at the same time are quite slim.  Even so, I don't think the score increase would be that great.

The only way I could see a 43 point gain from utilization would be if the OP had only one credit card with a $300 limit, meaning that his individual card utilization would also be his aggregate utilization.  Even in that situation, I'm not sure crossing from maxed out to non maxed out would yield that gain, nor am I sure that crossing from say 16% utilization to 2% across the 9% threshold would do it.

[Anonymous]

Actually, yes, I got a notification from MyFICO  about a balance change.  Just double-checked and it was actually a balance increase.  Don't know where to look to see if something dropped off, I actually have several cards.  

[Anonymous]

Do you use monitoring software? You'll want to go through all of your accounts and see if a previously visible negative item is gone. How many negatives do you have in total on your reports? Often monitoring software will tell you how many negatives accounts you have total, or amount of time since your last negative. You may see one of these indicators has changed.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Do you use monitoring software? You'll want to go through all of your accounts and see if a previously visible negative item is gone. How many negatives do you have in total on your reports? Often monitoring software will tell you how many negatives accounts you have total, or amount of time since your last negative. You may see one of these indicators has changed.

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This was what I was going to say.  Maybe there was a derogatory mark that you've had on your account for years that finally dropped off of your credit report over time.  Or you disputed something.

[Anonymous]

Any software in particular I should be using?  Never heard of this I don't think.