Scoring drop on FICO 8 Auto

[Anonymous]

Looking at the “no loan” angle a little differently here, and admittedly talking out of my (ahem) since I don’t know the specifics of auto scoring:

Being that the auto-enhanced scores place emphasis on auto loans, could it be a possibility that since @Remedios hasn’t had a car loan in a couple years, some age factor such as “it’s been x number of months since you had a car loan, and that’s the important part of auto scoring” could have caused her score drop, like hitting an anniversary threshold month? Like if it’s been 0-18 months since your last auto loan closed, it’s considered recent, but at month 19, it’s now been long enough since your last car loan that it lowers your score somewhat?

If that’s the case, I mean, you could just go buy a car and see what happens lol, but kidding aside, anyone have any insight or ideas along these lines? It would be like it’s been too long since you demonstrated you can responsibly handle a car loan, so they’re downgrading their assessment of your ability to do so...

[Remedios]

Probably.
I never really look at those scores so it caught me off guard
I should be gaining points for not trashing the car in two years 😂 or being financially responsible and not buying car every two years 😐

[Anonymous]

You’d think so. But then again, FICO also penalizes you for being debt-free so at least they’re consistent in their apparent lack of logic.

[Revelate]

I would suggest the no recent loan activity is a much larger penalty than not having an auto loan, that's been my experience and Remedios' reason codes bear that out too in their order.

There was a dealer F&I guy on the forums a while back who suggested that the ones that got hardcore hit on FICO Auto industry options were ones that had student loans or no loans whatsoever... I took the student loans one with a grain of salt, but even when I didn't have an auto loan my FICO 8 AU scores were generally still above my classic scores in roughly the same way they are now even with an auto loan.

When it comes to not having an open loan on one's report, I just don't understand it... people are willing to pay money to monitor their scores, why wouldn't they be willing to pay less than that to actually improve them?

Last I heard Penfed SSL was alive and well for playing reindeer games among some other CU's, when we're talking less than a Starbucks coffee in total interest over 5 years, seems like a no-brainer to me personally.  I have no intention of dumping my mortgage but if I still had my EX FICO 8 at 827 like it was a year ago before I took a bunch of inquiries added several accounts, I might've been darned close to 850 if I had a pretty installment utilization and that was before I got the small bump for an AAOA of 5 years.

[SouthJamaica]

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@Revelate wrote:

I would suggest the no recent loan activity is a much larger penalty than not having an auto loan, that's been my experience and Remedios' reason codes bear that out too in their order.

There was a dealer F&I guy on the forums a while back who suggested that the ones that got hardcore hit on FICO Auto industry options were ones that had student loans or no loans whatsoever... I took the student loans one with a grain of salt, but even when I didn't have an auto loan my FICO 8 AU scores were generally still above my classic scores in roughly the same way they are now even with an auto loan.

When it comes to not having an open loan on one's report, I just don't understand it... people are willing to pay money to monitor their scores, why wouldn't they be willing to pay less than that to actually improve them?

Last I heard Penfed SSL was alive and well for playing reindeer games among some other CU's, when we're talking less than a Starbucks coffee in total interest over 5 years, seems like a no-brainer to me personally.  I have no intention of dumping my mortgage but if I still had my EX FICO 8 at 827 like it was a year ago before I took a bunch of inquiries added several accounts, I might've been darned close to 850 if I had a pretty installment utilization and that was before I got the small bump for an AAOA of 5 years.

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No, last I looked PenFed didn't have workable reindeer games SSL.