FICO vs Vantage - make sense of this one...

[masscredit]

I've been giving a friend some advice and have added her to a few of my oldest cards to help her inprove her credit.  Her FICO score was in the mid-500s when she was approved for a Cap 1 auto loan in April. It's been awhile since she had credit (there is an old BK on her reports) so the loan was the first good thing in many years. I added her to my Cap 1 card first. That bumped her Vantage score up to 695 from 600. I then added her to my two Barclay cards. She saw 11 points from that to bring her Vantage score up to 706.  She recently became a member of DCU so she's now able to get her EQ04 score.  It was 627 before I added her to my cards and now up to 641 today. A real 14 point increase.

What I find interesting is, I'm helping her rebuild her credit but my EQ Vantage score is lower than hers - 690. My FICO EQ 04 score is 709 and the 08 version is 740. Why did her Vantage score jump up so much?  I generally use this scoring model for entertainment purposes only but I'm kind of courious. A friend uses CK and can view his FICO score through Discover. His CK score is always a lot higher than his FICO. Mine is the opposite.

[Anonymous]

I've seen people report their FICO scores 100 points higher than VS and conversely their VS 100 points higher than their FICO.  There doesn't seem to be much consistency here.

Based on the limited information you provided above, I'd say that VS scores are perhaps more sensitive to AAoA / AoOA, at least for very new files.  We already know that FICO isn't overly critical of low AAoA / AoOA, as people have reported 740-760 FICO scores with paper thin files of 6-8 months total credit history.

[Thomas_Thumb]

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@masscredit wrote:

I've been giving a friend some advice and have added her to a few of my oldest cards to help her inprove her credit.  Her FICO score was in the mid-500s when she was approved for a Cap 1 auto loan in April. It's been awhile since she had credit (there is an old BK on her reports) so the loan was the first good thing in many years. I added her to my Cap 1 card first. That bumped her Vantage score up to 695 from 600. I then added her to my two Barclay cards. She saw 11 points from that to bring her Vantage score up to 706.  She recently became a member of DCU so she's now able to get her EQ04 score.  It was 627 before I added her to my cards and now up to 641 today. A real 14 point increase.

What I find interesting is, I'm helping her rebuild her credit but my EQ Vantage score is lower than hers - 690. My FICO EQ 04 score is 709 and the 08 version is 740. Why did her Vantage score jump up so much?  I generally use this scoring model for entertainment purposes only but I'm kind of courious. A friend uses CK and can view his FICO score through Discover. His CK score is always a lot higher than his FICO. Mine is the opposite.

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Is your aggregate utilization higher than hers? Have you opened some new accounts recently? Do you have any collections on file or lates in the last to years on cards that your friend is not AU on? The Cap 1 AU card likely moved your friend onto a different VS3 scorecard - how old is the cap 1 card? Perhaps the BK crossed some age threshold on VS3 during that time as well.

My EQ Fico 04 score is always lower than my EQ VS3 score (varies from 20 to 60 points below) and my EQ VS3 score is always lower than my EQ Fico 8 by 15 to 25 points.

Typically VS3 does not care how many cards report balances but is quite sensitive to aggregate utilization. In contrast, Fico 04 is quite sensitive to # cards reporting balances. Fico 8 is in the middle - somewhat sensitive to # (%) of cards reporting balances.

Collections are treated differently depending on the scoring model with Fico 04 being the least forgiving.

[masscredit]

My total utilization is 12%. She had one card before mine were added. It has a $500.00 limit and a balance of $247.00. I have one recent card (PenFed). That was opened last month. No collections for lates for me.  Just a BK from 2009. I believe her BK is from 2010.  The Cap 1 that I added her to will be 6 years old in Oct. One of the Barclay cards is 5 years old and the other is 3 1/2. 

[K-in-Boston]

I would chalk it up to different buckets and different profiles. Has she had a chance to see what effect the AU accounts have had on her 08 scores yet? I'm one of those people that Vantage 3.0 hates. Today's CCT update showed me at 746 EQ (new high by 1 point!) and 733 TU scores for FICO 08. Today's CK update has me at 651 EQ and 646 TU, so 95 EQ and 87 TU points lower. That has been pretty consistent for me since CK switched from the TU New Accounts Model to Vantage 3.0.

[Anonymous]

I think Vantage is very sensitive to new "stuff" .  

[K-in-Boston]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I think Vantage is very sensitive to new "stuff" .  

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I think so too, but it doesn't seem to be the big factor for me as mine were "too low" even before all of the new apps the past few years.  Vantage certainly seems to penalize much more for utilization than FICO 08, and I wonder if Vantage actually penalizes for certain raw dollar amounts of revolving debt regardless of the actual overall utilization?

[Anonymous]

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@masscredit wrote:

My total utilization is 12%. She had one card before mine were added. It has a $500.00 limit and a balance of $247.00. I have one recent card (PenFed). That was opened last month. No collections for lates for me.  Just a BK from 2009. I believe her BK is from 2010.  The Cap 1 that I added her to will be 6 years old in Oct. One of the Barclay cards is 5 years old and the other is 3 1/2. 

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You say the BK is from 2010?  Is it a Chapter 7 or 13?  If it is a Chapter 13 then it might have dropped off her report since it has been 7 years now.

[Thomas_Thumb]

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@masscredit wrote:

My total utilization is 12%. She had one card before mine were added. It has a $500.00 limit and a balance of $247.00. I have one recent card (PenFed). That was opened last month. No collections for lates for me.  Just a BK from 2009. I believe her BK is from 2010.  The Cap 1 that I added her to will be 6 years old in Oct. One of the Barclay cards is 5 years old and the other is 3 1/2. 

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So, when factoring in the Cap 1 AU card balance and CL does she have a lower aggregate UT% than you? If so, that could account for her score temporarily exceeding yours. Also, your recent account addition may be negatively impacting your score a bit.

I do suspect the major bump in her score has more to do with her BK aging than adding the AU card but, both events likely play a roll.

[Anonymous]

That is true for me. I bought a new car yesterday and saw my vantage score drop like 50 points. My fico scores didn't move. I don't care about my fako scores no more. My fico score are on the money. So I am happy