No FICO negative reason code for AoYA drop to 0?

[Anonymous]

Never considered it like that!

I thought maybe FICO might round down 0.0x% to zero but it's feasible someone with an arsenal of only high limit cards might be considered all NPSL cards! I'll try to find a PDF of a 3B someone shared to see if they had any cards under that limit reporting.

I doubt it affects more than the tiniest minority of individuals. I've only seen it mentioned a handful of times online with folks which is why I mentioned to my friend to report a larger balance on a card and he immediately saw a FICO increase attributed only to that. Initially he never reported any usage at all and $5 or $50 reporting had no bump and we were confused about that since he wasn't at 850x3 or anything. Once he let a higher balance report he did get a bump until he reported $0 again and scores fell again.

[Anonymous]

I would think that any non-zero balance reported constitutes 1% utilization, no matter how small the decimal.  As suggest above, though, certain credit limits if they are very high (say > $50k) may be ignored by some scoring models.  That being said, if one of these monster limit lines was used for AZEO, it's possible no balance would be seen across all revolvers in terms of scoring.

[Revelate]

---

@NRB525 wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Unfortunately the data points on that assertion are against the rules to link to.

But the person who posts elsewhere about it is someone I actually know in real life and I do trust their personal data point.  Then I've seen at least 2 or 3 truly anonymous indviiduals who have confirmed with their own profile the same issue.

The one person I do know has a lot of charge cards with no limit, a lot of revolvers with insane limits ($70k or more) and a total capacity of 7 figures of credit.  I've seen their 3B a few times over the past 6 months and it's ludicrous mode for sure, but hilarious to consider.  I didn't confirm their ding for a low AZEO balance on one card via a 3B though.

---

If a rounding issue, it should scale, right? So lower limit cardholders should be able to trigger a penalty by too-low of an AZEO item?

Or is the issue that the revolvers over $50k are NPSL equivalent, so it looks like the cardholder has no revolvers?

---

You would think; might be something else going on here as even $20 on $183,000 appears to work for me not including my HELOC (I haven't tested smaller recently to be fair to see if a smaller number would work) suggests that $280 would be fine on 2.5M.

[iv]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

I indirectly got the answer to my first question above from another thread where CGID and TT chimed in.  Basically, a score over 800 with different credit monitoring software often won't present any negative reason codes because you're within 50 points of the max score.  So, when my AoYA dropped to 0 months, since my score was still over 800 it didn't generate a negative reason code because the monitoring software (CCT) simply doesn't provide them at that score. 

---

Yup.  It's important to note that the reason codes are still generated at any score level, just suppressed from display.

If you have a myFICO monitoring subscription, a useful trick is to look at the TU Alerts for "Score Change" - those (accidentally, I assume) still list the FICO8 reason codes in the "Details" section, even when the score is in the 800-850 range.

For example, my most recent FICO8 TU alert (from 842->845, with two new accounts opened in the last 6 months) showed:

• Too many accounts with balances.
• Too many inquiries last 12 months.
• Length of time accounts have been established.
• Proportion of loan balances to loan amounts is too high.

And the "Length of time accounts have been established" code is clearly based on AoYA in this case, given that AAoA and AoOA are above any reported threshold.

Mind you, with the same report data, EX has been pinned at 850, and EQ has been bouncing back and forth between 850 and the 840s... so either the AoYA penalty is tiny, or the buffer over 850 is pretty large.

(The only reason TU seems to be bouncing just under 850 is a slightly higher number of HPs than the other two.)

[Anonymous]

---

@iv wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:

I indirectly got the answer to my first question above from another thread where CGID and TT chimed in.  Basically, a score over 800 with different credit monitoring software often won't present any negative reason codes because you're within 50 points of the max score.  So, when my AoYA dropped to 0 months, since my score was still over 800 it didn't generate a negative reason code because the monitoring software (CCT) simply doesn't provide them at that score. 

---

Yup.  It's important to note that the reason codes are still generated at any score level, just suppressed from display.

If you have a myFICO monitoring subscription, a useful trick is to look at the TU Alerts for "Score Change" - those (accidentally, I assume) still list the FICO8 reason codes in the "Details" section, even when the score is in the 800-850 range.

For example, my most recent FICO8 TU alert (from 842->845, with two new accounts opened in the last 6 months) showed:

• Too many accounts with balances.
• Too many inquiries last 12 months.
• Length of time accounts have been established.
• Proportion of loan balances to loan amounts is too high.

And the "Length of time accounts have been established" code is clearly based on AoYA in this case, given that AAoA and AoOA are above any reported threshold.

Mind you, with the same report data, EX has been pinned at 850, and EQ has been bouncing back and forth between 850 and the 840s... so either the AoYA penalty is tiny, or the buffer over 850 is pretty large.

(The only reason TU seems to be bouncing just under 850 is a slightly higher number of HPs than the other two.)

---

If I had access to my negative reason codes, I am almost certain that my 4 would be identical to the ones you bullet-pointed above.  Do you always get 4 reason codes, or are less than 4 a possibility?  I'm curious about the "too many accounts with balances."  On your profile, how many of your accounts have balances and how many is that expressed as a percentage of the total number of accounts?  I'm wondering if this reason code is pointing strictly to a number of accounts or if it's actually a percentage of accounts as we usually assume.

[iv]

@Anonymous wrote:

---

If I had access to my negative reason codes, I am almost certain that my 4 would be identical to the ones you bullet-pointed above.  Do you always get 4 reason codes, or are less than 4 a possibility?

---

The only times I've seen less than four reason codes is with EX2 and EX2-Bankcard - those I've frequently seen just three reason codes on.

@Anonymous wrote:

---

I'm curious about the "too many accounts with balances."  On your profile, how many of your accounts have balances and how many is that expressed as a percentage of the total number of accounts?  I'm wondering if this reason code is pointing strictly to a number of accounts or if it's actually a percentage of accounts as we usually assume.

---

Oh, the "too many accounts with balances" is just from not bothering to PTZ before statement close - recently I've just been PIF after they cut; so that's been bouncing around (and is what's causing EQ/TU to move around a bit).

I haven't reported 100% with balances, but close. Most recently (including AUs), 7/9 revolving (and 3/3 installment) accounts reported balances - clearly neither the number nor the percentage of accounts is mattering all that much for FICO8 (again, probably large buffer above 850 in the model...)

[Anonymous]

Very cool to know, thanks for that info.

[Thomas_Thumb]

---

@iv wrote:

@Anonymous wrote:

---

If I had access to my negative reason codes, I am almost certain that my 4 would be identical to the ones you bullet-pointed above.  Do you always get 4 reason codes, or are less than 4 a possibility?

---

 The only times I've seen less than four reason codes is with EX2 and EX2-Bankcard - those I've frequently seen just three reason codes on.

@Anonymous wrote:

---

I'm curious about the "too many accounts with balances."  On your profile, how many of your accounts have balances and how many is that expressed as a percentage of the total number of accounts?  I'm wondering if this reason code is pointing strictly to a number of accounts or if it's actually a percentage of accounts as we usually assume.

---

Oh, the "too many accounts with balances" is just from not bothering to PTZ before statement close - recently I've just been PIF after they cut; so that's been bouncing around (and is what's causing EQ/TU to move around a bit).

I haven't reported 100% with balances, but close. Most recently (including AUs), 7/9 revolving (and 3/3 installment) accounts reported balances - clearly neither the number nor the percentage of accounts is mattering all that much for FICO8 (again, probably large buffer above 850 in the model...)

---

When my score triggers reason statements on MyFico, the number of statements can be 2, 3 or 4. I don't see a correlation between CRA and # of reasons listed. Perhaps the spread between max score and actual impacts # of reason statements generated but, that's speculation. See below.

With my Discover and AT&T (Citi) credit cards I receive two reason statements when score is below max.

[Anonymous]

It would make sense to me that the greater the score, the fewer negative reason statements provided, generally speaking.  I would think most scores 750 or lower would easily be able to generate the standard 4 reason codes, as there are likely at least that many factors imposing a penalty of some sort.

[Anonymous]

With mine and DW scores 760 to 780 we still get reasons codes   DW also gets higher limits by far than me Strangly enough.  DW scores do best with about 4% util.  With DW total limits around $80K  this is acually more than I like to report.  When I pay her cards down to 2% her scores drop around 7 points.