What happens when all cards are closed by borrower?

[NRB525]

An interesting situation on another thread in Applications as me thinking, what happens when someone has a history of credit activity, but then all the credit cards are closed.

I'm not talking about a BK situation.

This is the hypothetical:

Someone has a number of credit cards, has generated a FICO score.

All the cards go to zero balances. The cardholder closes the cards. Every last one of them.

The cardholder does not open any new credit cards, no revolving accounts open, no charge cards, no installment loans remain with balances.

The closed cards are still vislble on the credit bureau data.

This is the first question:

One year after completion of the above closures, can one obtain a FICO?

And if the answer is NO, then the follow on (which is the subject of the other thread)

The second question:

Would opening one new credit card revive the FICO score immediately, without the 6-month wait for a typical new file to generate a payment history?

[Thomas_Thumb]

Interesting questions - all I know is the following (from myFICO Q&A):

What are the minimum requirements for a FICO score?

There's really not much to it; in order for a FICO® score to be calculated, a credit report must contain these minimum requirements:

• At least one account that has been open for six months or more
• At least one undisputed account that has been reported to the credit bureau with in the past six months
• No indication of deceased on the credit report (Please note: if you share an account with another person this may affect you if the other account holder is reported deceased).

1) At least one account that has been open for 6 months or more - does that mean it still must be open? It clearly means than account needs to have had an open status of at least 6 months.

2) Undisputed account reported to CB within the past 6 months. It appears that an account "closed" at the request of the card holder may be de-activated but not formally closed by the issuer for quite some time [at least back in the day]. Perhaps they allow for a re-activation grace period to keep customers.

There are two cards I had, a Chase Visa and Cap One/Best Buy card, that I made final payments on and "closed". However, in both cases, the issuers continued to report "ok" status monthly and the CB reports show "official" close dates 18 months later than when I requested they be closed. I know my cards were de-activated. This was back in 2005 and 2008. I did not get reports back then but the monthly reporting and "official" close dates are listed on recent reports.

[NRB525]

Ok, so it seems that the poster on that other thread, who was expecting to activate an entirely dormant credit account just by getting one new card to report, was mistaken. That new card would need to report for 6 months, basically starting from ground zero again, and then be undisputed at the 6 month mark.

If there were other history over six months old, that ended 6 months prior to the new card app, that likely would appear once the new 6 month term had crossed, since it's still historical reported activity for the person, but by itself that ancient history would not hurry up the new reporting, it seems.