You mean like grade inflation?
My suspicion: we are all being trained by frequent free access to credit scores, following “the rules” to improve scores. We are not necessarily more creditworthy, but are behaving for the “test”, holding on to old credit cards, possibly adding lightly used new accounts we don’t need, etc.
One thing I learned, was that despite the fact that I had too few open accounts, my opening an account for a large vet bill and paying it off did not help my score at all. The bureaus like mortgages, car loans, credit cards. They are NOT keen on installment loans and credit based payment plans.
Too lazy to do research?
I do retail finance for used cars..
Scores are lower than ever and soon they will be hiding medical collections under 500 bucks to boost scores.
I just turned someone down with a 355 score. had 31 inquiries for auto loans in the past 3 days.
they had 4 repos in the last 5 years.
One recent change is that bad medical debt does not effect your score.
I don’t know. I go between 817 and 830 and have been like that for the past couple of years. (High 700s before that point)
No mortgage payment in the States (small one in Thailand, but that doesn’t count). I have about 50k in credit card limit but pay everything off every month (typically make payment within a week of making a charge). And I’m just living on a military retirement right now, can’t start collecting social security for a couple of years yet, so income is nothing to brag on.
I figure they’d hit my credit score a little when I retired because I have so much credit card limit available based on my income, but so far they haven’t.
No they haven’t.
I am regularly pissed tha my FICO score is much less than my Vantage 3.0 score.
Yes - they watered down the algorithm to boost credit scores about 3 years ago.
Obama would have shut down all the credit bureaus if he could for being racist:
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/cordray-has-hidden-agenda-policing-credit-bureaus/
“It’s part of the administration’s political agenda to reallocate credit. Equalizing outcomes in credit reporting across racial and income groups serves that goal, called “the democratization of credit.”
Today, lenders are using algorithms to make safe loans but those algorithms are being attacked for being racist by Biden’s people in the CFPB:
Liberals still prosecuting banks for redlining in an attempt to create the recipe for another economic melt down as in 2008:
Seems to me that the credit scores are for your manipulation. You can have a perfect record then suffer more than a hundred point hit with one small error. Try not to borrow money!
No credit scores haven’t been messed with in some back door manner.
The only recent change is that medical collections are not affecting credit scores too much.
That’s a good thing as it’s very easy for one of those to get attached .
The bigger thing to be concerned with is coming decline in housing prices.
That’s a certainty in my opinion .
Yes, credit scores have been watered down mostly based on data reporting changes.
1. Medical collections under $500 no longer reported
2. Pay to delete - previously credit bureau rules did not allow a creditor to delete accurate information. Once an item was paid, it was marked paid but still reported up to 7 years from last delinquency. The bureaus stopped enforcing the accurate info rule and collection agencies and some original creditors negotiated with borrowers to pay (or settle and account for less than what was owed) and the item would be deleted completely. This skews the score because if you were late or settled for less than owed future creditors won’t know.
3. Judgements no longer appear on credit reports or calculated into credit score. So if a creditor had to sue you and won in court, that no longer gets taken into account.
4. Credit bureau programs like Experian Boost. Allows people to sign up for a service (I believe a paid service) where the bureau takes into account cable, cell, electric utility even streaming service payments into credit score. So if you pay Netflix on time it increases your score.
If I were making credit policy, I would require a higher score (or higher interest rates) to offset the additional risk.
bmp for ltr
I have a 800+ credit score : )
I pay on time and I have 5 cards of which 3 I do not owe any money on.
The way they score does not make sense as they give you points on using the same credit cards with the rising interest rates vs taking points away for swapping them out for 0% ones.