@Anonymous wrote:
With a new credit account, the harm to your FICO score is negative from inquiry, negative from reduction in AAoA, and negative from having a new account (is this from rebucketing as seeking credit?). There may be positives from adding to your total available credit and utilization.
The question however is with a backdated AMEX, do you even take a hit from having a new account? I have always thought of FICO scoring as being based on a snapshot of your credit report. If this is the case, how does FICO know you even have a new acount? I would assume it looks at the open dates of your credit accounts. So if this is true, a backdated AMEX may not even register as new account if it is old enough. It could use some other method as a hidden new account flag. Wonder if anyone has any evidence of this one way or another.
Iffy on the inquiry...YMMV.
Iffy on the AAoA. You don't always change AAoA when adding accounts because FICO rounds down to nearest whole number. Going from 4.9 years to 4.1 years has zero impact on present AAoA because it remains unchanged at 4. Now it'll take an extra 10 or so months to get back to 5 yr AAoA.
Likely for the new account ding. YMMV on how recent your 2nd newest account was. This is unrelated to rebucketing. Though you can get rebucketed by adding new accounts, just not every time (assuming you were baddie free and you actually changed buckets).
You can only take a hit on a backdated Amex for new credit if the new Amex was only backdating a few months or less. If the account was older than a year you aren't apt to see any negative impact, other than potential impact to AAoA. Again, YMMV if the card was older or younger than AAoA. FICO scores off the "open date" and when an Amex is backdated, Amex recalls when you first opened a card with them and reports that org. open date as the open date on your CR. For many, a backdated Amex is a huge asset. For others like myself, my one and only experience with Amex has an open date younger than my AAoA by over 2 years so I stand to possibly take a hit if I open a new one.
