Thin File; Thick File

[grillandwinemaster]

So I understand that a thick file is more robust, or hardy and as a result less susceptible to the ups and downs of various credit fluctuations. 

My question is, what constitutes a thick file vs a thin file? I have 33 accounts listed on my report. These vary from car loans, mortgages, student loans, and credit cards. I would think this constitutes a thick file? I'm sure there's members on here with 100 or 200+ plus accounts. 

So what number of accounts make a thin vs thick file? How many accounts do you have? 

[Revelate]

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@grillandwinemaster wrote:

So I understand that a thick file is more robust, or hardy and as a result less susceptible to the ups and downs of various credit fluctuations. 

My question is, what constitutes a thick file vs a thin file? I have 33 accounts listed on my report. These vary from car loans, mortgages, student loans, and credit cards. I would think this constitutes a thick file? I'm sure there's members on here with 100 or 200+ plus accounts. 

So what number of accounts make a thin vs thick file? How many accounts do you have? 

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We bastardized the term here for shorthand description (partly my fault over the years, mea culpa).

The traditional definition comes out of the mortgage world: <4 tradelines you were a thin file.  This changed some number of years ago in the mortgage market to where the new definition was <3 tradelines.  Now I'm not sure it's relevant anymore, if you can generate a credit score at all you can get a conventional mortgage so the meaning really has become indistinguishable from no file.

I don't know that there's a magic number when it comes to stabilizing one's FICO score, but by my data on 4 (or maybe 5, I had an impulse app in Sep 2012) by the time my positive history hit 1 year my scores pretty much stabilized with everything being pretty discrete and sensical changes since then.  At 23 tradelines now and 3 years AAOA and roughly 5 years of history, I either have to rack up a bunch of balances on my credit cards, or miss two payments to make any meaningful impact on my scores.

[NRB525]

So Revelate, when can we expect you to "take one for the team" and have two lates so we can watch the score fireworks

[Revelate]

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@NRB525 wrote:

So Revelate, when can we expect you to "take one for the team" and have two lates so we can watch the score fireworks

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I, uh, already did on Transunion  712->674 at the time it landed.

Post-mortgage fugue and I wasn't paying attention to a JCB fee that landed and there's no autopayment ability in their archaic interface, and whoops.  Some reason they only reported to TU so I didn't worry about it as other than a mortgage I have to go out of my way to get someone to pull TU (well FIA CLI's I guess)... had an immediate impact which is mostly gone after six months but that's partly I suspect because I already had lates on the report from 2010 is my thinking.  It'll be interesting to see the comparisons as the lates come off the other two and the tax lien falls off all of them.  Now back at 708, so it wasn't very concerning all things considered on my file; I'd probably be around a 720 on TU 8 without the late.

[RobertEG]

To pick up on Revelate's response, the literature on conventiaonla scorecard development that discusses thin vs thick files also uses 3 to 4 trade lines as the classic dividing line between thin an thick.  The distinction is then often used as a categorizstion, or "re-becketing" break point to take alternte paths in the algoritm based on whehter the file is considered thick or thin.  Thin files may, for example, change the weighting of categories, such as length of credit history or impact of new credit

However, it is a very subjective term, and any scorcard developer can choose their own break point.

[AzaleaB]

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@RobertEG wrote:

To pick up on Revelate's response, the literature on conventiaonla scorecard development that discusses thin vs thick files also uses 3 to 4 trade lines as the classic dividing line between thin an thick.  The distinction is then often used as a categorizstion, or "re-becketing" break point to take alternte paths in the algoritm based on whehter the file is considered thick or thin.  Thin files may, for example, change the weighting of categories, such as length of credit history or impact of new credit

However, it is a very subjective term, and any scorcard developer can choose their own break point.

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Question - does account age have any bearing on thin/thick profiles? I thought FICO scorecards were based on age ( assuming clean sheets).

[Thomas_Thumb]

File age is its own category, separate from # accounts. Nonetheless, credit payment history is a combination of account QTY and account age. The combined factors do influence loan officers.

P.S. Some publications I have read reference a consumer with 5 total accounts (combination open + closed) as being a Thin-File consumer. I would suggest 6 or more accounts would be prudent for avoiding a potential thin file designation.

Side note: VantageScore 3.0 appears to require more total accounts than Fico 8 (or earlier versions) to satisfy credit depth criteria.

[RobertEG]

The discussion is beginning to wander into the deep forest, and discussion of categorization, or what is commonly referred to on this site as "bucketing."

The desginations of thin vs thick files, clean vs dirty files (absence vs presence of major derogs), etc. exist because they are typically then used to produce different logic brances within scoring algorithms, based on some overall file categorization.

What exactly triggers different bucketing is a trade secret in most scorecards to protect their algorithms from reverse engineering, but these categorizations are important in comparing consumers with others having similar characteristics.

When we dont know why a score change occured, we blame it on being "rebucketed" based on some unknown change in our file categorization.

[driftless]

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@RobertEG wrote:

To pick up on Revelate's response, the literature on conventiaonla scorecard development that discusses thin vs thick files also uses 3 to 4 trade lines as the classic dividing line between thin an thick.  The distinction is then often used as a categorizstion, or "re-becketing" break point to take alternte paths in the algoritm based on whehter the file is considered thick or thin.  Thin files may, for example, change the weighting of categories, such as length of credit history or impact of new credit

However, it is a very subjective term, and any scorcard developer can choose their own break point.

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Am I assuming correctly that we are talking about open accounts?

[Revelate]

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@driftless wrote:

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@RobertEG wrote:

To pick up on Revelate's response, the literature on conventiaonla scorecard development that discusses thin vs thick files also uses 3 to 4 trade lines as the classic dividing line between thin an thick.  The distinction is then often used as a categorizstion, or "re-becketing" break point to take alternte paths in the algoritm based on whehter the file is considered thick or thin.  Thin files may, for example, change the weighting of categories, such as length of credit history or impact of new credit

However, it is a very subjective term, and any scorcard developer can choose their own break point.

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Am I assuming correctly that we are talking about open accounts?

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When talking algorithm if it's even factored, at all (I have my doubts though some have theorized it on various industry options though I suspect this comes from the CK effect), unknown.  When talking the original term from the mortgage lending world, typically all accounts as I understood it, but these days the discussion is around open tradelines so /shrug.

The term has morphed over time and it's not consistently used here either, vis a vis prime/subprime to describe credit cards, no real meaning in that context but we use it anyway.