My Alliant Share Secure Loan showed up at all three CRAs this week. Reported with a balance at 8.9% of the original loan amount. This is my only open installment loan, although I have a closed mortgage on the report. I have a clean credit report, with an AAoA of less than 3 years. Here are the FICO 8 results:
Experian gained 34 points from 729 to 763.
Equifax gained 41 points from 736 to 777.
TransUnion gained 21 points from 779 to 800.
I'm happy with that 
@Anonymous wrote:My Alliant Share Secure Loan showed up at all three CRAs this week. Reported with a balance at 8.9% of the original loan amount. This is my only open installment loan, although I have a closed mortgage on the report. I have a clean credit report, with an AAoA of less than 3 years. Here are the FICO 8 results:
Experian gained 34 points from 729 to 763.
Equifax gained 41 points from 736 to 777.
TransUnion gained 21 points from 779 to 800.
I'm happy with that
As well you might be
Question: when you say it showed up, do you mean this was this the first month it reported?
@Anonymous wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:Question: when you say it showed up, do you mean this was this the first month it reported?
Yes (the way I phrased that wasn't very clear, was it?). The loan was approved on February 10, 2016. I received a myFICO alert that it had reported to Experian on March 4. Then I received alerts yesterday and today (March 7) that it had reported to Equifax and TransUnion.
Fascinating. Because this might give us more proof of the 9% break point.
Mine just reported for the first time as well on EQ & EX. But mine reported at 15.4%, as opposed to your 8.9%.
My results a measly:
EQ +8
EX +1
@Thomas_Thumb wrote:I suspect you may be on a different scorecard - so different results. Nonetheless, it would be interesting to see impact on your score by dropping amount below 9%. My prediction = additional gain less than 10 points.
Some say I am pessimistic but, I prefer to be pleasantly surprised rather than letdown.
Do test and report back.
For what it's worth, my higher breakpoint was around 6 points across the board every single iteration so 8 on SJ's file is reasonable, at least for me the second break point was worth an additional 18 points and you know my file ain't pretty: such changes should be magnified on a clean file which other users have suggested.
I think if SJ's line is reported correctly and he now dips it below 10% (or 9% incase FICO rounds here which it does do in other areas) then it's pretty conclusive that the lower breakpoint is indeed 10%.
As an amusing aside, I had to call Alliant to get my password reset (iCloud keychain issues, sigh, dumbest thing I did was say "OK" to that and apparently you may need to have your mother's maiden name on their account to be able to reset it online) and the helpful and friendly CSR said "Oh well your loan is almost paid off" and I darned near started giggling "Yeah, funny that!" haha.
@Thomas_Thumb wrote:I suspect you may be on a different scorecard - so different results. Nonetheless, it would be interesting to see impact on your score by dropping amount below 9%. My prediction = additional gain less than 10 points.
Some say I am pessimistic but, I prefer to be pleasantly surprised rather than letdown.
Do test and report back.
I definitely will.
Sorry but the reindeer game isn't working out for me, and I'm about to stop playing. It's a game I can't win.
1. When I had no open installment loan Experian was penalizing me for "having no recent installment activity".
2. When I opened my 3rd share secured loan and immediately paid it down to 15.4%, Experian changed to penalizing me for having too high an installment balance.
3. I decided to use my free 10 minutes with a credit advisor at Experian.com to sort it out.
4. He said to me that it's a mistake; that with instalment loans 80% is "very good", and 39% is "exceptional"; and that since mine was paid down to 15.4% it shouldn't be showing up as a risk factor.
5. He transferred me to Experian consumer relations and told me to tell them that the Credit Advisor had said the installment loan risk factor was a mistake, and that I'm disputing it.
6. The consumer representative at Experian claimed that one can't dispute the way the FICO 8 model is computing risk factors. She claims that it's interpreting my balance as high based on the fact that it's a 48 month loan which is only 1 month old, and that it's disregarding the fact that the balance is down to $77.
I give up. If the loan is creating a fictional negative risk factor, what good is it? I don't want to wait a year for my scores to improve a little.
Updtate 6/18/16 The following month, when I paid the share secured loan down from 15% to 9%, my score shot up.
@SouthJamaica wrote:Sorry but the reindeer game isn't working out for me, and I'm about to stop playing. It's a game I can't win.
1. When I had no open installment loan Experian was penalizing me for "having no recent installment activity".
2. When I opened my 3rd share secured loan and immediately paid it down to 15.4%, Experian changed to penalizing me for having too high an installment balance.
3. I decided to use my free 10 minutes with a credit advisor at Experian.com to sort it out.
4. He said to me that it's a mistake; that with instalment loans 80% is "very good", and 39% is "exceptional". And that since mine was paid down to 15.4% it shouldn't be showing up as a risk factor.
5. He transferred me to Experian consumer relations and told me to tell them that the Credit Advisor had said the installment loan risk factor was a mistake, and that I'm disputing it.
6. The consumer representative at Experian claimed that one can't dispute the way the FICO 8 model is computing risk factors. She claims that it's interpreting my balance as high based on the fact that it's a 48 month loan which is only 1 month old, and that it's disregarding the fact that the balance is down to $77.
I give up. If the loan is creating a fictional negative risk factor, what good is it? I don't want to wait a year for my scores to improve a little.
Why are you not just paying it down to $20 or whatever?
1) Experian CSR's don't know the algorithm any better than we do; actually, they probably know it far less. Same as any other CSR.
2) You get that reason code until you get under the second breakpoint, that I can confirm explicitly.
3) It doesn't sound like you were under the second breakpoint at 15.4%, so pay it down to 5.4% or similarly and see.
Occam's Razor applies The CSR was just like every other CSR we deal with, and you weren't under the second magic breakpoint. So pay down to the number or better that everyone else has found works for them.
Also they have to tell you SOMETHING until you get to approximately 850, the order they are listed in matters, if it was #3 or #4 on the list those can mostly be ignored anyway in terms of major score impact. If it was #1 or #2, ugh, but we know for a fact if you have no open installment loans it is a straight FICO 8 penalty.
Play to win bud . Don't give up just yet because your current expectations haven't been met.