Back in the day, AMEX used to offer free FICO scores to cardholders, but that ended around 2015 when they switched to providing a FAKO Vantage score.
Lenders typically check your FICO score and FAKO scores can vary wildly from FICO scores, making them less than useful.
I wrote yesterday about Discover offering their cardholders free FICO scores, namely the TransUnion FICO Score 8.
A commenter noted that AMEX now provides FICO scores as well. I guess I’ve been living under a rock, because sure enough it seems that AMEX has quietly switched back to providing FICO scores. In my account, I can now see my Experian FICO Score 8.
Cardholders can login to their AMEX account and view their FICO score here.
Oh the hits we take for juicy new card offers…
Citi rounds out the Big 3 credit reporting agencies by providing cardholders with the Equifax FICO Score 8, but they provide a Bankcard version of the FICO score, which has a scale or 900 points instead of the standard 850 points provided by the regular FICO Score 8. That makes it somewhat less useful than the AMEX and Discover offerings.
Because Citi likes to be different:
More important then keeping track of your score, is regularly checking your credit report for mistakes or fraud. You can check your Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion reports for free every week on AnnualCreditReport.com.
You can read more in this post about what comprises your credit score and how to improve your score.
Do you stay on top of your credit report and score?
HT: ShimshonK
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32 Comments On "AMEX Once Again Offering Free FICO Scores"
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Btw, it’s not particularly new, definitely been many months, maybe even a couple years.
Wow those are great scores! Congrats!
I just hit 801 for the first time so I’m pretty excited too
Interesting to note that discover used to offer free scores to anyone, but recently they limited that only to card holders
T4
This was a few months ago. They sent an email detailing the switch.
It’s very detailed in what they provide.
Free!? You get what you pay for….
I prefer to pay for a premium FICO which includes a guaranteed 800+.
Wow Dan what a score!!
How is it possible that inquires for all new card bonuses don’t reflect hard on your score?
Business credit cards don’t “reflect hard” on the score from what I’ve seen. Also, new personal credit cards may hit the score very briefly before quickly bouncing up.
My Fico score from Amex (785) is different from my Discover score (800).
They use different credit reporting agencies as I note in the post.
What’s the difference between this and credit karma?
That is a FAKO.
I’m fascinated with your through the roof score. I get a range of FICO and fake between the low teens and as high as 840 from Wells Fargo. Ironically, when I got my Venture X from Capital One, whose site has a low 820’s score for me, it came in the mail with an accompanying letter saying my score was 780–as in below, well below, 800. Apparently they make decisions on a drastically more conservative model than the one they blow smoke with.
At any rate, I wonder how your score got so high given how many applications you must submit to have all of these cards you write about. I have only a few cards but got 3 more over the past 2 years (6 month intervals) and can’t rival you though I’m old and have a long and literally perfect repayment history with utilization almost never topping 10%.
Various strategies. For starters, bring your utilization down to under 1%.
Thank you. Would love to, but I actually need to use these cards to accumulate some points, and unfortunately my ideas about how big my credit line should be to accommodate a utilization rate that low is markedly greater than theirs.
I did recently get a 25% bump from Capital One, though I asked for much more in their online interface. It seems like the key to getting the increase is their innocuous looking question of how much of a balance do you project averaging if we give you an increase. That seems to be the key answer that they focus on, and the limit they’ll give you is exactly 10x the answer you give to that question. I was at $30K for a limit and maybe $1.5K outstanding (always pay full statement balance), asked for a $65K limit to get a nice low utilization percentage, but only said I’d bump my balance to $4K. Instantaneously I was told I was getting bumped to $40K. Could be a coincidence, but I suspect had I said I’d charge up $6.5K my request would’ve been honored. At any rate I still run about $1.5K a month through the card.
How do you get such high limits that your utilization is under 1% yet you’re raking in rewards points?
Thank you.
Just pay off the bills (aside from $1 or so) before the statement closes.
Is there any way to get your credit utilization back down, if you haven’t been paying your bills before the statement closes?
You mean even before the due date?
Pay off by the statement close date?
My score goes down if I wait for the payment due date to pay?
Thanks
Please share more strategies!
I’m pretty sure you can get your score directly from Experian for free through their website
Not FICO.
FICO Score 8
This
It’s sort of like a game to play the credit scores. My credit utilization is usually no higher than 1%, so can’t really tweak that more. Sometimes when applying for a new card, I also put in for a credit line increase on an older card or two. Other than having more aged accounts, not much left to be done to get my credit scores higher.
The latter was quite easy back in the day.
You mean like back in the day when it’s wasn’t so popular for moderators on FT to bash bloggers on FT? 😀
I think some here will be impressed by how high your kids’ credit scores will be when they are 18-21 and get into this game too.
Is there any way to bring your credit utilization back down after it went up based on you not paying your bills before the statement closes? My payments are all up to date yet my credit utilization in my amex account is still at 90 percent
From my experience, the Amex score is not that great. Over the last six months, my Discover score was 825-845. Citi was also going up and down (875+/-). It makes sense because my utilization was changing. However, Amex was stuck at 850. It looks like a marketing tool.
Are you sure that you’re looking at the AMEX FICO?
Yes. Sorry, a small correction. It was 845 in September. I missed that. But it was quickly back. In my case, the Amex score is the most “friendly” score. The Citi score is the least “friendly” score. Both Amex and Discover can hit 850, but Citi is always under 880. The Discover score is the most sensitive one. Disclaimer: I haven’t got a new credit car/loan for a couple of years. Almost all of my cards are 10+ years old.
Just BTW the fico credit score on amex does not work out of country without a VPN I believe the same is with Experian
The Amex credit score thing used to work outside of the US without a US VPN/IP address until a handful of months ago. Then suddenly it went away and now it’s only accessible online via Amex when using a VPN node in the US or a US IP address.
I have noticed more and more countries have credit reporting and population directory sites that seem geo-blocked by IP address in the last 12 months than was the case in 2022 or even January 2023. Not sure how much good such blocking does with regard to criminals and government actors using these info channels to exploit for their own ends.