Interpreting Your Credit Score

When you or a lender receives your FICO score, up to four “score reasons” accompany the score. This helps to explain the top reasons why your score was not higher. These reasons are more useful than the score itself in helping you determine how you might improve your score over time, and whether your credit report might contain errors. However, if you already have a high score (for example, in the mid-700s or higher) some of the reasons may not be very helpful, as they may reference the factors that have the least impact on your score, such as: length of credit history, new credit and types of credit in use.

Here are the top 10 most frequently given score reasons. (Note that the specific wording given may be different from the reasons shown in this list.)

  1. Serious delinquency.
  2. Collection filed.
  3. Derogatory public record.
  4. Time since delinquency is too recent or unknown.
  5. Level of delinquency on accounts.
  6. Number of accounts with delinquency.
  7. Amount owed on accounts.
  8. Proportion of balances to credit limits on revolving accounts is too high.
  9. Length of time accounts have been established.
10. Too many accounts with balances.