|
December 6, 2004
How Does Debt
Affect FICO Score?
"When I ordered my FICO score, one of the
reasons given for my low score was that �The amount owed on your accounts is too
high.� Since I own marketable securities that are worth twice as much as all my
debts combined, how did they come to this completely unjustified conclusion? And
what can I do about it?"
The two major components of a credit score,
which on average account for 2/3 of the total score, are payment history and
amounts owed. Where the first is a record of how well you have met your
obligations over the years, the second is a snapshot of your indebtedness right
now. If your credit history is short, your current indebtedness can be the most
important factor determining your credit score.
Ordinarily, a financial advisor seeking to
determine whether consumers were living within or beyond their means would look
at debts relative to assets and income. But the FICO credit scorers don�t have
information on assets or income, only on debt. They must make do with that.
The approach they use is to compare the
outstanding debt on each of your accounts with the maximum amount of debt that
the credit grantor has set for you on that account. This generates a set of
"utilization rates" for each of your accounts. For example, if you have two
credit cards with maximum balances of $4,000 and $5,000, and if the actual
balances are $3,000 on both as of the most recent date of record, the
utilization rates are 75% and 60%.
Other things the same, the higher the
utilization rates, the lower the FICO score. The FICO genie interprets high
ratios to mean that the borrower is living closer to the edge.
Beyond this type of broad generalization, the
genie keeps his cards close to his vest. Would two accounts with utilization
rates of 75% and 60% generate a higher score than one account with a rate of
75%? Would 4 accounts with rates of 50% each generate a higher score than one
account with a rate of 75%? I can�t answer questions like this because Fair
Isaac, the company that developed the system, won�t let me look at their
formulas.
Fair Isaac does have a simulation routine on
their web site where people who buy a copy of their credit score for $12.95 can
test various strategies for improving their score. Some people may find it
useful for that purpose, but it will not answer the kinds of questions I posed
above.
What Information on
Debt Does FICO Use?
The data on debt balances used to compile a
credit score are reported by credit grantors, and isn�t always correct. That�s
why it is a good idea for consumers to check their credit well before they go
into the market, giving themselves time to get any errors fixed. Suggestions on
how to correct errors can be found at
How Do You Correct Mistakes in
Your Credit Report, and also on Fair Isaac�s site
www.myfico.com.
But there is another potential problem in
connection with the data on utilization rates that borrowers should be aware of.
For various reasons, credit grantors do not report maximums on all revolving
accounts. Where no maximum is reported, the largest balance ever to be reported
on the account is used in its stead. This necessarily results in higher
utilization rates for such accounts.
For example, Doe currently has a $1,000 balance
on an account on which the maximum is $10,000. Awhile back, Doe had a balance of
$2,500, which is a high as it has ever gone. If the maximum is reported on this
account, the utilization rate would be 10%, but if it is not, the rate would be
40%. And Doe�s credit score would be lower as a result.
A recent Federal Reserve study indicated that a
relatively small number of credit grantors account for most of the cases where
maximums are not reported. It also found some tendency for credit grantors to
report maximums less frequently for sub-prime borrowers than for prime borrowers.
If you order your credit score through Fair
Isaac, you can get a list of all your credit grantors, and their credit limits.
If any have no reported limit, you can either request that the limit be
reported, or terminate the relationship. In the unlikely event that the credit
grantor won�t report the limit but you want to maintain the relationship anyway,
you can shift all your balances into this account temporarily so that the
highest balance comes closer to the unreported maximum.
Copyright Jack Guttentag 2004
| 
