myFICO composition and score factors

1) FICO score “ingredients.”

According to Fair Isaac:

  • Payment history
  • Amounts owed
  • Length of credit
  • New Credit
  • Types of credit

Please DO study this Fair Isaac page, it’s one of the few pages with excellent and ACCURATE information.

This is the data referred to at the top of the myFICO reports as FICO score “ingredients.”

Note that “types of credit” is NOT listed on the reports.  That’s probably because the rating is rather unscientific or in other words, they’d get a lot of complaints about incorrect ratings.

I don’t pay much attention to this section until I’m ready to draft disputes and to make recommendations for new accounts, etc.

When the length of credit (account history) is NOT a score factor, this rating gives me a good idea how the FICO software rates the report.  And since OLD accounts are often reported only on one or two reports, there may be a big difference  between reports.

2) The FICO score factors

Here are the score factors as I posted them for my client:

Trans Union

Top Negative Factors

You have a collection on your credit report.

Number of collections on your credit report: 4 Collections

You have few accounts that are in good standing.

Number of your accounts currently paid as agreed 0 account

— the student loans are NOT rated

You have a short credit history

Your oldest account was 9 Months ago.
Average age of your accounts 9 Months ago

— the student loans still count, although unrated

There is no recent activity on your revolving accounts.

Your credit report shows no open revolving accounts [?] or it does not report recent information (such as balance or credit limit) about any of your revolving accounts. Your FICO score evaluates your mix of credit cards, installment loans and mortgages. People who demonstrate responsible use of different types of credit are generally less risky to lenders.

What’s helping your FICO score

You have no missed payments on your credit accounts.

Number of your accounts with a missed payment: 0


It’s a lot of work to copy/paste and format the score factors from the reports, the kind of task perfect for software.  But you can’t improve credit scores without being able to QUICKLY review the score factors.

For followup reviews, I copy the initial factors and then update with the new factors.  Each score has its own descriptive topic:

7/13/08 — TU — 569

I annotate the topic with important changes or problems.
On this report we only have two accounts, both unrated student loans.  We also have 4 collections and it is a bit odd to see that the payment history is “very good” and the positive factor:

“Number of your accounts with a missed payment: 0 accounts.”

That’s why it’s SOMETIMES so important that collections are NOT incorrectly reported as tradelines.

The 8/8/08 TU myFICO score of 661 (still with 4 collections) documents that AU accounts are NOT entirely ignored in the new FICO 08 TU scoring formula.

But first I’ll post the unrated student loans in the next entry.

11 Responses to “myFICO composition and score factors”

  1. Jodi

    What do you mean (for TransUnion credit history length)that student loans count, “but are not rated”? My spouse’s TransUnion credit score is the lowest of the 3 bureaus, and they don’t list his student loans at all, which is one of his oldest accounts. Should I dispute this account to TU, and try to make them list it?

  2. Jodi, there’s no point to disputing an account that’s NOT reported.

    You CAN ask the LENDER to report.

    But I highly recommend that you review the FICO score factors and reports (all 3) and ANALYZE the information BEFORE requesting that the accounts be reported.

    Whether the accounts would help or hurt depends on the specifics for the students loans (balances, original balances, age) AND the other accounts on the report.

  3. jodi

    Thanks, Christine. I can’t find any specifics on myfico.com on this subject. The loan is 7-years-old, original balance was $17000 and current balance is $7500. Other accounts on report are in good standing, but not as old as the student loan. A 4-year-old credit card account is present and still open, and a 9-year-old account was positive but is now closed.

  4. jodi

    I posted something here yesterday and it posted, but today I don’t see it. Any idea what happened?

  5. Jodi, sorry, I was busy with litigation and client work.

    I’m going to have to change how this site is set up because this blog is intended for credit PROFESSIONALS. Was hoping to find other professionals to document FICO scoring bugs and systemic credit reporting problems and create some awareness.

    Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

    “I can’t find any specifics on myfico.com on this subject.”

    This blog is NOT working for consumers at all. Despite my many screenshots and explanations of how important the score factors are, you don’t have the slightest idea what to do. Of course you’re not in the credit/FICO scoring business and obviously totally new to this.

    Anyway, it would probably help to have the accounts reported, but I would never make any recommendations without reviewing the score factors.

  6. jodi

    Thanks. Please accept my apologies as I did not realize the intended purpose of your site. I do understand the important factors, but find no way to predict exactly how FICO will react. For example, I don’t see anywhere where it tells me how adding an account to my report would either increase my score because of its’ age or decrease my score because of my debt to income ratio. Just constructive criticism: You may want to curb your capital letters (they read like you’re yelling) and potentially harsher language that could be misconstrued.

  7. ALL CAPS are intended to EMPHASIZE a word and that was my intention. Have to admit that I’m a bit frustrated that after 15 years of actively publishing the FICO and credit scoring issues on the web, I have yet to find a another credit PROFESSIONAL. Have you checked the page with my history?

    http://creditfactors.com/about/history/

    There are links to some of my major projects including my submissions to regulators about the FICO scoring fraud and systemic credit reporting problems.

    If the regulators and legislators hadn’t IGNORED me, we wouldn’t have a credit crisis today.

    Anyway, my subscription site contains a lot more specifics on how to analyze FICO scores and I answer subscriber questions in the subscriber forum after they post the score factors and answer my questions.

    It’s not MY fault that FICO scores and credit reporting are so screwed up and nobody can claim that I didn’t do MANY times more than anyone else to change it.

    Sure, I failed.

    But what did YOU do to change the world?

  8. jodi

    Wow. You’ve displayed quite a professional attitude and demeanor 😉 . Good luck with all of your endeavors.

  9. jodi

    I hope you understood my sarcasm in my last comment.

  10. jodi

    Note: A winking emoticon denotes sarcasm or joking.

  11. Jodi, once again I get to document that the most abusive people are freeloaders and losers like you.

    EVERY ONE of my FREE forums was closed because of morons like you.

    So I’ll focus on helping people who PAY me. And that’s too bad, at a time when so many are losing their jobs, their homes, everything they have.

    If it wasn’t for dimwits like you, maybe there would be more professionals volunteering their time and sharing their expertise free of charge for the benefit of all.

    I disabled comments.

    Congratulations, Jodi!

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