[Update] UTI 9% --> 10% = 9 point drop. But what is 10%?

[SouthJamaica]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

---

@Anonymous wrote:
@CassieCard: yes the reports show everything from which a change could occur.

Thank you! This is what I really needed to know, because this means that balance change was the only thing that could have caused that drop.

The MF alerts are event driven as you will understand. Any score change that has occurred is also tacked onto the alert but there’s not necessarily a correlation between the alert and the score change. Consequently if there is a score change it is intuitive the text explains the reason but that’s not necessarily the case. It could be from a factor that does not cause an alert such as aging or an inquiry dropping off or something of that nature that does not trigger an alert itself.

Way back in this thread, I posted this about granularity of Experian CreditWorks alert changes vs myFICO:

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Understanding-FICO-Scoring/Update-UTI-9-gt-10-9-point-drop-But-what-is-10/m-p/5491201/highlight/true#M150700

I have both, and Experian is much faster than myFICO. As you can see from the screen snips in my post, Experian can also help you narrow down what caused a score change, whereas myFICO just gives you the final result, not the intermediary calculations that EX's service will show.

The only thing they could’ve caused your point loss was the balance increase if there were no other changes between your Experian report from the day before. Now was is it caused because of crossing a dollar amount or a utilization percentage amount I do not know.

---

Well, you did mention something about 4 or 5% being a possible threshold. I won't be able to test that until April's report, when I go from a 6/6/6 utilization to 5/5/5. Right now, I think it's highly likely you are right.

And check out the graphic below, which is from a FICO whitepaper on machine learning and FICO scores. If we take it as fact, it says that I would lose 15 points going from under 6% to a 7-19% interval. With a .20 weighting that would be -3 pts. Just something to think about.

---

I don't take either MyFICO alerts or EX alerts into account. I have sometimes found the EX "alerts" to be a day behind the actual event.

I make my determinations based only on each day's new scores and new report.

[Anonymous]

---

@SouthJamaica wrote:
I don't take either MyFICO alerts or EX alerts into account. I have sometimes found the EX "alerts" to be a day behind the actual event.

I make my determinations based only on each day's new scores and new report.

That's exactly what I did! We have the same subscription, so I just selected the previous day's report in the drop down that showed 699 and compared it to the new one that said 696.

Like I said before, I have had only known positive changes, except for the balance changes, happening to my credit file since my last myFICO 3B report on January 10th, and will only have positive changes until next year at this time.

It's really, really simple for me since I only have 2 open revolving accounts which close within days of each other. Ageing, always good payments, and various balance changes which all occur in the sub 10% optimal range, on both individual and aggregate.

There's nothing else that could have caused that -3 point loss besides the increase in balance from 40 to 135, or 2% to 7%.

You already think there's a positive change associated with 8% to 7% aggregate, so this change I experienced - on 1 card, with the other at 0%, so this is both aggregate and individual - seems right in line with what you think is happening.

[Anonymous]

@CassieCard: except yours is happening @5%.. I think it’s clear there’s a breakpoint that you have found or there’s a dollar amount somewhere that’s included as a factor, as was mentioned earlier.

@SouthJamaica: I think yours may have been caused by individual utilization crossing a threshold, as I think was stated earlier. Yes I agree Experian is usually a day behind and MyFICO a few days behind. You’re absolutely right to discard the text and concentrate on the data.

[SouthJamaica]

---

@Anonymous wrote:
@CassieCard: except yours is happening @5%.. I think it’s clear there’s a breakpoint that you have found or there’s a dollar amount somewhere that’s included as a factor, as was mentioned earlier.

@SouthJamaica: I think yours may have been caused by individual utilization crossing a threshold, as I think was stated earlier. Yes I agree Experian is usually a day behind and MyFICO a few days behind. You’re absolutely right to discard the text and concentrate on the data.

---

In my profile, changes in individual utilization alone, which do not cross 30%, never have any effect on score. Only when it affects aggregate utilization is there a scoring effect.

[Anonymous]

@SouthJamaica: just out of curiosity what was the change in individual utilization? Because your aggregate you say is between six and seven and I’ve never heard of a breakpoint there but I guess anything is possible.

@CassieCard: The illustrative score cards are intentionally misleading, the numbers on there are not going to be correct, so I doubt those utilization percentages are correct.

[Anonymous]

---

@Anonymous wrote:
@CassieCard: The illustrative score cards are intentionally misleading, the numbers on there are not going to be correct, so I doubt those utilization percentages are correct.

---

I assume they are all fake, because that's exactly what I do when giving presentations to clients about how our systems work. Also, that won't be the only thing taken into account with utilization either, even if it is real. There could be those utilization breakpoints and also 2,3, or 7 other different sets of intervals, all weighted differently and taken together.

I keep seeing that 6% number though. Experian mentions it in the credit reports we get ("ideal usage is under 6%") and it's in another paper I remember reading on their site. Probably nothing to it.

I'll start believing it when I see my April report showing a gain in points going from 6/6/6 to 5/5/5 utilization.

[Anonymous]

I think all of those ideal percentages from CMS front-end fluff software are BS. We see 6%, 10%, 30% etc. depending on where you look.

[SouthJamaica]

---

@Anonymous wrote:
@SouthJamaica: just out of curiosity what was the change in individual utilization? Because your aggregate you say is between six and seven and I’ve never heard of a breakpoint there but I guess anything is possible.

---

As I said before, the change in individual utilization was from 19.6% to below 1%, causing overall utilization to drop from 8.17% to 7.43%.

[Anonymous]

@CassieCard: I will be interested to learn the results of your testing maybe there is a breakpoint at six I do not know.

@SouthJamaica: I apologize you did say that before. Wow that’s very interesting .