Wondering how FICO 10T trended data will work in practice...

[Pppoolboy]

From this very site:

"FICO Score 10 T builds on FICO Score 10 by also assessing 'trended credit bureau data' when determining your score. Scores that don't use trended data typically use the most recently reported month of data to drive certain components of the score such as the most recently reported balance and/or credit limit on an account.

"By contrast, with FICO Score 10 T the "trended data" considers a longer historical time frame (the previous 24 months or longer) of the balance and/or credit limit to get a more refined view of your credit risk."

https://www.myfico.com/credit-education/credit-scores/fico-score-versions

It seems clear from the above excerpt that trended data will look at not only the current version of a person's credit report but prior versions as well.  It states that non-trended scores "use the most recently reported month of data," implying that trended scores do not; rather, they use prior months' data in addition to the most recently reported month of data.  Trended scores have to look back in time in order to obtain past data, because those data are not present in the current report.  The "longer historical time frames" of, say, your past credit limits of a card are not shown anywhere on your most recently generated credit report, are they?  That info is lost to time, UNLESS one has access to your credit reports that were generated in the past.

Couple of questions regarding this...

1) So who's storing all this data?  I'm assuming it would be the CRAs.  Do the CRAs run everyone's report each month and keep copies so that the FICO scoring algorithm can dig through them to obtain prior stuff that isn't on the most recently generated report?  What if no one, including you, requests your report for, say, 6 months.  Do the CRAs generate and keep copies of these different (monthly, weekly, daily..?) reports anyway?

2) What happens with disputes?  Suppose you successfully dispute something that's a year old and it comes off the report.  I assume that removal would iterate back through the past reports so that the removed account is erased from the trended data as well as the current report.  I would hope, certainly.

I'm guessing that the historical data of any tradelines are stored, perhaps forever, in the CRAs database.  It's not hard to store a change in a tradeline and when that change happened.

When a report is generated, the computer simply uses the most recent reporting of each of those tradeline's data and the non-trended scoring algorithms only look at that last reported data for each tradeline.  The historical data points have always been there and will always be there, the scoring models simply didn't look at them.  Now the trended ones do.  So it's not really a "monthly report" being run like the excerpt above would suggest, it's more about looking at every data change in each tradeline and when it happend.  Successfully disputing and removing a past piece of data would remove it from the historical set and would not be used when that set is calculated for the trended data.

But that brings up perhaps a more disturbing fact that prior CRA data never actually goes away.  It's always there.  Perhaps even when derogs "fall off" after 7 years they're simply hidden or ignored... they're still in the system somewhere.

I think what threw me was the phrase "Scores that don't use trended data typically use the most recently reported month of data..."  This is an inaccurate way of putting it.  "Scores that don't use trended data only use the most recently reported changes in each tradeline" would probably make more sense.

[Snook_on_the_Line]

Your current reports do contain the historical data of your past credit limit history and also your month by month balance and reported payments for at least 24 months for each account.    

if you pull your actual credit report from annualcreditreport.com and poke around you will find the credit limit and balance historical record for each account.   

[Snook_on_the_Line]

This is a screenshot from an Experian report dated today sourced from annualcreditreport.com.    
as you can see the history of every months balance and payment and credit limit is already on your current report 

So 10t doesn't use any additional info.    
they just use what's already there differently

[CreditCurious]

The credit agencies already track and record this stuff. Go to the Equifax website, you can click on each of your revolving accounts and see monthly statement balance, minimum payment, actual payment and historical credit limit.  I think it goes back 24 months, perhaps longer.

It would be trivial to map this and see if a person has increasing or decreasing utilization over time, and keeps stats on defaults for any given demographic slice of these groups.

Disputes could be handled pretty easily.  If something is reported incorrectly, delete it or amend the info to correct it.  That would change the trendline, and your FICO 10T score gets updated.

[FicoMike0]

That's interesting. The historic data is already there. Also, even when you pay to zero before reporting, that payment is recorded as well. They can determine your intra billing cycle utilization, if they choose.

[AndySoCal]

@Pppoolboy  Credit trended data was developed several years ago for the mortgage industry.  If trended data is being used out of the mortgage industry today I am not sure. The insight trended data gives a lender is how a consumer uses revolving credit. Simply does the consumer pay the balance in full each month or does the consumer pay over time. 

[Snook_on_the_Line]

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@FicoMike0 wrote:

That's interesting. The historic data is already there. Also, even when you pay to zero before reporting, that payment is recorded as well. They can determine your intra billing cycle utilization, if they choose.

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I never noticed that payments before the statement date were recorded on the report before I took that screenshot.   

[Thomas_Thumb]

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@FicoMike0 wrote:

That's interesting. The historic data is already there. Also, even when you pay to zero before reporting, that payment is recorded as well. They can determine your intra billing cycle utilization, if they choose.

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Data is only reported monthly to the CRAs except for those rare CC issuers that report $0 balances off cycle.

Trending is looked at on a monthly basis in aggregate. The last 2 years are trended and analyzed for increasing or decreasing debt in $ amount and utilization %. QTY of revolving accounts with balances can be trended as well.

Fico uses data available in CRA reports for scoring. Daily and weekly data is not stored - each account has monthly data fields in your CRA report.

Credit monitoring services may provide and graph information/score from daily pulls but, that info is not stored as such by the CRAs.

As mentioned numerous times, Fico does not analyze payments in a manner that differentiates transactor PIF behavior from revolver behavior. Some creditors choose to not furnish monthly payment data - just balances. As a result, PIF transactor behavior can not be established for those accounts.

* Current month payment GE prior months balance => transactor behavior for the account.

[NoHardLimits]

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@Thomas_Thumb wrote:

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@FicoMike0 wrote:

That's interesting. The historic data is already there. Also, even when you pay to zero before reporting, that payment is recorded as well. They can determine your intra billing cycle utilization, if they choose.

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Data is only reported monthly to the CRAs except for those rare CC issuers that report $0 balances off cycle.

Trending is looked at on a monthly basis in aggregate. The last 2 years are trended and analyzed for increasing or decreasing debt in $ amount and utilization %. QTY of revolving accounts with balances can be trended as well.

Fico uses data available in CRA reports for scoring. Daily and weekly data is not stored - each account has monthly data fields in your CRA report.

Credit monitoring services may provide and graph information/score from daily pulls but, that info is not stored as such by the CRAs.

As mentioned numerous times, Fico does not analyze payments in a manner that differentiates transactor PIF behavior from revolver behavior. Some creditors choose to not furnish monthly payment data - just balances. As a result, PIF transactor behavior can not be established for those accounts.

* Current month payment GE prior months balance => transactor behavior for the account.

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For people who make multiple payments per month, transactors might still appear to be carrying a balance.  Let's say I charged $5000 which posts as my April statement balance.  I make a $5000 full statement balance payment the next day.  Then, I charge another $5000 and pay $1000 of that before the May statement cuts with a balance of $4000.    If the payment field reflects the combined payments of $6000, then that would accurately show transactor behavior.  But if the payment field only reflects the last payment of $1000, it will appear as though I've carried $4000 in balances.