40 Fun Facts About Credit Scores

Which factor carries the most weight in a FICO Score, counting for about 35 percent of the total?

Payment history outweighs even how much you owe, which ranks second at about 30 percent, because the first thing a lender wants to know is whether past bills were paid on time.

Which credit bureau admitted in 2017 to a data breach that exposed personal details of about 147 million people?

Equifax lost names, birth dates and Social Security numbers to the hackers. The firm began in 1899 as Atlanta's Retail Credit Company.

AnnualCreditReport.com, despite the yearly promise in its name, offers a free report from each bureau how often?

Once a week became permanent after the three bureaus first opened weekly access during the COVID-19 pandemic; federal law itself guarantees only one free report a year.

A perfect credit score on the standard FICO scale, which starts at 300, is which three-digit number?

850 is the ceiling for base FICO Scores, while the versions built for car loans and bank cards run on a wider scale, from 250 to 900.

Which negative mark can remain on a credit report for up to ten years, three longer than most others?

Bankruptcy outlasts the seven-year limit that covers most other bad news on a report, from late bills to accounts sent to collectors.

Which type of credit check, triggered by a loan or card application, can knock points off a credit score?

Hard inquiry is the kind that other lenders can see on your file. Looking up your own report is a soft one, visible only to you, and costs no points.

Which detail do FICO Scores ignore entirely, even though lenders routinely ask for it on applications?

Your salary is left out along with your job title, employer and age, because a FICO Score is calculated only from what is in your credit report.

Which kind of bank card does nothing to build a credit score, however carefully you use it?

Debit cards borrow nothing that has to be repaid later, so their use is not reported to the bureaus. Prepaid cards are ignored for the same reason.

What happens to the individual credit scores of two people after the pair marry and combine finances?

They stay separate, because each score is calculated from one individual's own borrowing record. A lender weighing a joint loan application simply looks at both.

Which measure, best kept under 30 percent, compares your card balances with your total credit limits?

Utilization ratio rewards low balances, yet you never need to carry debt to score well: paying the full bill each month gets the best results.

Which scoring model did the three major credit bureaus launch together in 2006 as a rival to FICO?

VantageScore first ran from 501 to 990 with letter grades attached, before a 2013 version adopted the same scale as its older competitor.

Which 1970 federal law gave Americans the right to see and dispute the files that bureaus keep on them?

The Fair Credit Reporting Act followed hearings in Congress over a big bureau whose files mixed in rumors about people's jobs, schooling and politics.

Engineer Bill Fair founded the company behind the FICO Score in 1956 with which mathematician?

Earl Isaac met Fair at the Stanford Research Institute, and the firm the pair started was called Fair, Isaac and Company, later shortened to four letters.

Which free anti-fraud tool blocks lenders from pulling your file until you choose to lift the block?

Credit freeze requests must be honored for free by law, and the paid locks that bureaus sell alongside them are no more effective.

What must an employer obtain from you before pulling your credit report as part of a background check?

Written permission is required by federal law, and an employer who then turns you down because of the report must hand you a copy of it.

What is the term for someone added to another person's credit card who can spend without owing the debt?

Authorized user status is usually passed on to the bureaus by the card issuer, so the account can appear on the file of someone who never signed for it.

Which type of credit card, aimed at people building credit from scratch, requires a cash deposit up front?

Secured cards let you spend only up to the amount you put down, but unlike prepaid plastic the bills you pay help build a credit history.

Which tidy-minded money move can lower a credit score by shrinking the total credit you have available?

Closing an old card leaves the same balances set against a smaller total limit, so you look closer to maxed out even though you owe no more than before.

Which label for loans to borrowers with damaged credit became infamous during the 2008 financial crisis?

Subprime loans carry higher interest to make up for the extra risk the lender accepts, and most of the mortgages sold this way had adjustable rates.

Which household costs usually go unreported to the credit bureaus unless a collection agency gets involved?

Utilities such as electricity, water and cable rarely share on-time records with the three bureaus, so years of prompt bills may do nothing for a score.

How overdue must a bill generally be before the lender can report it as late to the credit bureaus?

30 days is the usual trigger, so a bill settled a few days late may cost a fee but leaves no mark on a score; federal student loans get a longer grace still.

Experian, one of the three big credit bureaus, has its corporate headquarters in which European capital?

Dublin is home to the parent company even though its shares trade in London and its American roots lie in a unit of the aerospace firm TRW.

TransUnion was set up in 1968 as the parent of a company that leased which product?

Railroad tank cars were the trade of Union Tank Car, a descendant of Standard Oil; its new parent bought a Chicago credit bureau a year later and changed course.

FICO Scores went mainstream in 1995 when which mortgage giant told lenders to use credit scoring on new home loans?

Freddie Mac made scoring routine for mortgage applications six years after the first general-purpose FICO Score reached lenders in 1989.

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 at first outlawed lending bias on only two grounds: sex and which other?

Marital status joined sex in the original law, at a time when lenders often made women find a male co-signer; race, religion and age followed in 1976.

Sesame Credit, a private scoring system launched in China in 2015, was built by an affiliate of which tech giant?

Alibaba's affiliate Ant Group draws on shopping data from the company's own sites, and a high rating can waive the deposit on a hotel room or rental bike.

Which label does FICO give its highest band of credit scores, the one sitting above very good?

Exceptional is the top of five named bands and marks a borrower well above the national average; the bottom band is simply called poor.

What do lenders call a debt booked as a loss, usually after about six months of missed bills?

Charge-off status does not cancel what is owed: the debt remains legally valid, and the mark is among the most damaging a credit report can carry.

Which startup, bought by Intuit in 2020 for about $7 billion, grew by handing out free scores to consumers?

Credit Karma costs nothing to join because lenders pay it whenever a recommended card or loan finds a taker.

The Mercantile Agency, founded in 1841 by Lewis Tappan to report on merchants' creditworthiness, grew into which firm?

Dun & Bradstreet got its double name from a 1933 merger with a rival; Tappan, an abolitionist, had built his first network of informants from fellow campaigners.

The word credit comes from the Latin verb credere, which carries which meaning?

To believe, or to trust, is the root sense: a lender hands over money in the faith that it will come back, and the same verb lies behind the word creed.

Which three-letter yearly borrowing cost, shown on every loan offer, usually drops as a credit score rises?

APR, the annual percentage rate, counts certain fees as well as interest so that rival offers can be compared, and the Truth in Lending Act governs how it is disclosed.

Credit cards are the classic example of which kind of credit, where you can borrow, repay and borrow again?

Revolving accounts have no fixed end date, unlike a car loan or mortgage, which ends for good when the borrowed lump sum has been paid back.

What must a lender send you after rejecting your application, spelling out the reasons or how to get them?

Adverse action notice rules also oblige a lender that relied on a credit score to tell you the number it used and the main factors behind it.

Which reporting agency do most US banks consult before letting a new customer open a deposit account?

ChexSystems files look back five years at overdrafts, unsettled balances and suspect deposits, and a bad one can get a new account refused.

FICO, founded in California in 1956, later moved its headquarters to a small city in which Rocky Mountain state?

Montana's city of Bozeman became the base after FICO opened an office there in 2016; earlier head offices sat in San Rafael, Minneapolis and San Jose.

Which Harvard law professor, later a US senator, first proposed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2007?

Elizabeth Warren helped set the agency up after the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act had created it, yet was passed over for the job of first director.

Which president signed the law that first entitled every American to a free yearly credit report from each bureau?

George W. Bush signed the measure in December 2003, by which time a handful of states, Vermont and Georgia among them, already required free copies.

What usually happens to a person's credit record when that person moves permanently to another country?

It has to be rebuilt in most cases, since few lenders look at records from abroad, and newcomers can wait years for a mortgage or a card as a result.

Which label does the CFPB give to consumer-facing credit scores that can differ from the ones lenders actually use?

Educational scores track the lenders' versions well for most people, but a CFPB study found a meaningful gap for one consumer in four.