FICO, the credit scoring giant, is adjusting how it calculates its three-digit key to your creditworthiness.
Consumers who have rising levels of credit card and other debt could see their FICO scores take a hit. But if you already have an above-average score, it might get even healthier.
With its new FICO 10 T score, FICO incorporates “trended data,” reviewing a consumer’s account balances and payment activity on loans and credit cards over the past 24 months. If you steadily pay off debt over time, that has a positive effect on your 10 T score.
Paying the full balance on your credit card each month is also good for your score, said Ted Rossman, of CreditCards.com.
Or, if you pay only the minimum amount due for a while and later bump up your monthly payments, that also helps your score, he said.
Plus, certain short-term changes in account activity might not hurt your score as much as they would have in the past.
Say you typically use a small percentage of the credit available to you on a credit card (a low credit-utilization ratio improves your credit score) and pay off the full balance monthly.
But then you book a vacation with your card, racking up a big balance and carrying some of it to the following month.
The 10 T score views that event as an anomaly, and it might not harm your score as much as it would under previous models.
The use of trended data “creates a smoothing effect” over such blips, said Joanne Gaskin, vice president of scores and analytics at FICO.
On the flip side, paying off a big chunk of credit card debt to decrease your credit-utilization ratio — especially if you take out a personal loan to do it — won’t likely give your score as quick of a boost as under previous models. And recent late payments might be more heavily penalized.
FICO says that credit card and auto lenders that require a minimum score of 680 (on a scale of 300 to 850) might approve about 6% more applicants under 10 T compared with FICO 8, a model that lenders commonly use now.
Lenders are usually slow to take on new scores, so it could be years until FICO 10 T is broadly adopted.
And the fundamental advice to maintain a strong credit score hasn’t changed: Pay your bills on time, keep your credit-utilization ratio low and apply for new credit sparingly.
