I had a mysterious 7 point gain in EX FICO 8 today. Ran over today's report and yesterday's with a fine tooth comb, and the only clue I could find was that in FICO 8 the negative reason code "seeking credit" had dropped out. But my age of newest account, hadn't changed, and nothing seemed noteworthy in my inquiries, most recent being just 35 days ago.
So I'm wondering what goes into "seeking credit" and what could have caused it to have dropped off.
@Anonymous wrote:Was that reason code last in the list / what was it replaced with?
Seeking credit to me points to inquiries not accounts, as inquiries can be acquired for reasons other than new accounts and there are other reason codes that deal with new accounts specifically.
I wonder if there are other thresholds when it comes to inquiries outside of just becoming unscoreable at 365 days, some variant related to perhaps number of inquiries within a finer time frame. Certainly with your most recent being just over a month old it's obviously still scoreable. Did you have any others become unscoreable?
It was last in the list.
It wasn't replaced by anything; the number of negative reason codes went from 4 to 3.
There was no difference in scorable inquiries.
But your point about the possibility of there being a threshold in number of recent inquiries is interesting. I will look at the inquiries with a view towards spotting something along that line. [Update: found nothing along that line]
Oh wait a minute. I just detected another change which might be giving me a totally different clue.
The addition of a positive reason code: "Substantial Installment Loan Repayment"
It says I've paid off 74% of my non-mortgage installment loans. The actual reported installment utilization is 25.769%. So maybe 25% is some kind of installment loan threshold in FICO 8.
Interestingly, although that reason code was added, there is zero difference between the numbers from yesterday and those reported today.
@Anonymous wrote:
@SouthJamaica wrote:
The addition of a positive reason code: "Substantial Installment Loan Repayment"
Do you have a negative reason code associated with that positive one? As we know, positive reason codes do not impact score. I was thinking you may have had one that said ratio of balances to loans is too high that could have gone away or shifted.
Do you get your codes from MF? I think it's odd that you went from 4 to 3 negative codes visible when there's still "room" for a 4th and I would imagine there's at least 1 more item holding your scores back that could have been included. Even with top notch scores there are usually several negative reason codes at play.
I'm getting these reason codes from experian.com. That's the only place I can monitor things on a daily basis.
The only change in negative reason codes was the removal of "seeking credit".
Agreed that there are plenty of things holding my scores back at the moment; my scores are presently anything but "top notch".
@Anonymous wrote:Yeah that's what leads me to believe there's something "wrong" with the codes (or lack of) provided. Have you gone through other periods where you've been provided with less than 4 by them?
I haven't noticed experian.com sticking with 4 reason codes at all.