Category: Analyzing myFICO reports 101

The account listing

This listing is very helpful on reports with many accounts. You can quickly see the balances, open dates, status and the dreaded little red flags indicating that the account was delinquent.

MISSING are the credit limits and high credit and whether/when the accounts were closed.

Credit analyzing software should include this data, drop the account number and instead of a “yes/no” for lates, include the DATE of the last late.

And of course one should be able to sort by clicking on the field name, as is standard for many programs.

Account details

Here’s the beef:

While there is MORE information on the credit bureau direct report, this is the information utilized in the FICO scores.

The student loans are INCORRECTLY reported as “unrated or bankruptcy” and SHOULD be reported as “paid as agreed.”

Because these are the ONLY accounts, the “unrated or bankruptcy” is devastating.

I’ll explain why once we got through this report.

Personal Information

• Personal data is NOT included in FICO scores.

While it’s not necessary to ensure the accuracy of personal data, I take a quick look when working with new clients.  Usually I don’t know where my clients live, where they work and how old that are.  It helps me communicate with my clients and STATE law is important when it comes to collection issues and law suits.

The ADDRESS is very important.

When I draft disputes for clients, I check the CURRENT addresses on all 3 reports and about 1/3 of  clients have a report with an incorrect current address.  Usually, but not always, these are reports with no open accounts.  

The credit bureaus will send investigation results to the address on the report and provide it to creditors for pre-approved credit offers.  

A notice of CORRECT address has to be included with the credit bureau disputes and it’s also a good idea to include a copy of ID and a utility bill showing the new address.

Personally, I avoid providing information to credit bureaus.  What does my drivers license number have to do with my credit?  When TU refused my disputes in 2001 and demanded ID, I immediately sued.  I didn’t ask them for a credit report, but for CORRECTION of my data.  I had even included a copy of my TU credit report with my dispute.  They should at least have started the investigation and could have sent a letter advising that I need to send ID before they’ll send me a new report.

It’s easier, cheaper and faster to just give them what they want, especially if they already have the info, such as your current drivers license number.

Credit bureaus also routinely refuse disputes and require ID even when the address is accurate and they recently sent investigation results to the same address.  It’s one of many ways for the credit bureaus to discourage disputes.

There are measures consumers should take to protect their privacy.

Never give home phone numbers or permanent cell phone numbers to creditors.  I recommend using free virtual phone numbers and PO boxes or private mail boxes for all .  Many millions of people will live a much more enjoyable life when they eventually default on their credit cards and have collectors hounding them.

Credit at-a-glance

Finally, some useful data.  I might have a quick look before I get to the accounts, but it’s not very relevant until after I reviewed the accounts.  If a reported mortgage doesn’t show up as mortgage in this table, there’s obviously a problem with the reporting.

Statements

I assume that this is the section for statements submitted by consumers to explain or dispute delinquent accounts after the credit bureaus refused to correct/delete.

FICO scores do NOT rate consumer statements. 

That’s why it’s pointless to submit these up to 100-word statements the credit bureaus promote when they don’t correct their reporting. 

It’s a lot like demonstrating at a political convention.  The protesters have to remain in a “free speech” zone where nobody hears and sees them.  Similarly, these “statements” are your right to free speech on your credit report, cleverly designed to be ignored.  You’re wasting your time and resources.

Additionally, there can be negative side effects. 

The late payments you’re apologizing for might drop off and the statement remains.  It could be embarrassing and/or could cost you an apartment or job.  If nothing else, you certainly look stupid.

Now if we could only get Congress to stop misleading consumers and to DELETE this fake and completely useless consumer “right”.

If you have something to say about incorrect reporting, say it to a judge.

The FCRA promotes these consumer statements to discourage lawsuits against creditors and credit bureaus.  The goal is to mislead consumers, falsely implying that they can mitigate the adverse effect of false credit reporting.  Only correction / deletion of the reporting will impact on the credit rating and that can best be accomplished with a lawsuit.

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.

I changed my mind about posting on the TU “bk or unrated” accounts when I looked at the report.

Since few credit repairers have seen a myFICO report, I decided to start with going through the myFICO report and explaining what to IGNORE.

It’s a HUGE problem that the myFICO credit reports are full of bla bla bla …

Here’s the screenshot of the first part of a Trans Union myFICO report with many meaningless words:

  As you can see, MOST of the text should be ignored: