Transunion 11 point decrease after holding steady for 5 months

[credit_endurance]

I have been baffled by my Transunion Fico score that has suddenly decreased some 11 points since March of this year from 724 in which it had previously held steady dropping no more than a point for 5 months in a row ( Nov2016-March2017) to now 713 . I tried to make some since of it thinking that it might have been my Navient installment loans which where paid in full in April but, I do still currently have a personal installment loan reporting so that shouldn't have caused the decrease. Then looking over my reports with a fine tooth comb, I found a glaring error in which I had requested back in March to have my penfed promise closed and that credit line shifted over to my platinum signature visa. So my report should notate as " account closed by consumer request"....Instead it says" Account closed by grantor" which is incorrect. 

So my question is...Would this small error in reporting happen to cause the score decrease that I have experienced?

[Anonymous]

I don't think so.  I have had a few "account closed by credit grantor" remarks on my report and never felt they were adversely impacting my scores.

When your installment loan closed, how did your overall installment loan utilization change?  I would think it went up and possibly a good bit if your current open installment loan is at a significantly higher utilization.

[credit_endurance]

My personal loan in which I currently have is reporting  a balance of $3,048/5000 so I still owe a significant chunk on it. Meanwhile I was only making monthly payments of $33.00 a month total for both Navient student loans in which I tried to stretch them out as far as I could before they eventually PIF and closed in April this year. So hmmm...Could that perhaps be the factor in the score dip?

[Anonymous]

I would say so.  What were the original balances on the school loans?  You're at 61% installment loan utilization right now.  If your student loans constituted at least the amount of your current loan or more, it would mean your installment loan utilization went up a lot once you closed them.  If they were tiny loans, it likely wouldn't matter much.

[credit_endurance]

1 loan was $875 and the other $1,300 stretched out for several years for AAoA maximizing. I probably paid more in interest this way. So would you think I would need to pay down my current loan to regain those points? Anywhere between 28% to 8.99%?

[Anonymous]

Paying it down to 8.9% would give you the biggest score jump, maybe 15-20 points above where you are now just guessing.  There are conflicting opinions if going down to 28.9% would result in a scoring increase and if so, how much.  Some think it may be a decent amount, others have reported little to no increase until hitting that 8.9% mark. 

As far as AAoA maximizing, what exactly do you mean?  Were you thinking about 10 years down the road, or did you mean now?  Any accounts both open or closed are figured into AAoA under FICO models, so if you closed your student loans immediately you would have no adverse impact to your current AAoA.  The only time your AAoA would change with respect to those loan accounts would be 10 years after you closed them and they fell off of your report.

[credit_endurance]

Yes. I was thinking down the road since the student loans remain my oldest accounts @ 13 years old. I think I will pay down this personal loan to the 8.9 % range and see what points I can gain from that. Although I already inquired with my local credit union about trying to keep my payments low enough to stretch out the remaining balance and they informed me that they could do a " skip pay" for up to 3 months then my payments would revert back to $158 per month essentially paying off the loan in a matter of months from that point.

[Anonymous]

Definitely let us know how the pay down to single-digit utilization impacts your scores.  I'm hoping you see a solid 10-15 points!

[credit_endurance]

My payment is due by the end of this month and reports usually update first of that previous month. So in August I will report back. Thanks again BBS for the insight! 

[credit_endurance]

My transunion experienced another 4 point drop. Absolutely not sure why this is happening. No new accounts have been reported in 6 months, no recent inquries. The only two things I can think of is I have disputed some lates with Trans over the last coulpe of months but my score had held steady through the dispute process. Also, it seems as if installment loans are now being counted in the scoring as revolving. Has anyone else noticed this? I have lost 25 points total since April of this year with not a real concrete explanation as to why.